


Steady and Strong

by masulevin



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy, Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Medical Procedures, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:13:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25190716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masulevin/pseuds/masulevin
Summary: Finally fed up with her dead-end job at JojaCorp, Hazel Shepard leaves the city and moves into her grandfather's abandoned farm in Stardew Valley. What she thinks is going to be a simple job raising crops and maybe some chickens turns out to be a complicated balance between befriending the locals, helping forest spirits, fighting monsters, and maybe (just maybe) falling in love with the handsome town doctor.A Stardew Valley AU for the 2020 Mass Effect Big Bang
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Comments: 27
Kudos: 31





	1. Summer, Year 1

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thanks to Azzy for coordinating all this! I can't imagine the amount of work it takes on the back end to get a whole event like this going.
> 
> An extra special thanks to [peltonea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peltonea/pseuds/peltonea)/[amistrio](https://amistrio.tumblr.com/) for working her beta-reader magic over this fic to help me make it the beauty that it is.
> 
> And another thank you to [CalypsoTea](https://calypsotea.tumblr.com/post/623310054134890496/) for doing the art!  
> 

Something has turned sideways since she moved into Pelican Town and took over her grandfather's ramshackle old farm. The most obvious sign is the giant slime that’s trying to kill her, but she’s better than that now. She pulls her sword free of the giant slime and it falls apart into smaller pieces which continue to attack her rubber boots.

A year ago — hell, three months ago — she was sitting at her dead-end job at JojaCorp, watching her ivy plant slowly dying under the fluorescent lights, counting down the minutes until she could clock out and go sit just as silently on her flea market couch in her studio apartment. And now, here she is, wielding a goddamn  _ sword, _ her extra-large backpack heavy with coal and chunks of gold ore, and there’s nothing even particularly remarkable about the occasion. It’s just a fucking Thursday, the sky overcast and the air cold with the first hints of a summer storm, and she’s fighting her fourth giant slime of the afternoon.

When she moved here, she thought she’d harvest crops, tend a flock of chickens, and spend her afternoons off reaching a deep, freckled brown on the beach, reading books from the town’s little library, and drinking in the Stardrop.

And instead? She’s stomping the last of the slimes to death and barely feels a twinge of remorse when she feels its little body pop under her boot.

Panting, she lets herself sit on the closest boulder, taking a minute to catch her breath. After climbing down so many floors and fighting so many slimes — enough that she’s starting to think the fortune teller on her old TV was  _ right  _ about the spirits being displeased with her — she’s nearly exhausted, hands shaking as the adrenaline leaves her.

She should climb back to the surface, maybe spend a few minutes in the spa by the railroad, just let her muscles relax and her wounds stop bleeding before she makes the long trek back to her little bed in her little house.

She  _ should  _ climb back to the surface, but she’s pretty sure if she goes just a little deeper, she’ll come across another entrance to the mine’s elevator, and then she won’t have to climb up, she can just ride. And isn’t that better?

She ignores the voice in her head that tells her to stop, because she’s been ignoring it practically every day since the last time she stared at that poor, wilting ivy (the same one that’s taking over her little kitchen), and replaces her sword with her pickaxe and starts cracking open the boulder she’d just been sitting on.

Sometimes those ladders hide in the most ridiculous places.

She finds one a few minutes later, slides down to the next level with her heart in her throat, and then… there’s nothing, just a sea of loose boulders as far as she can see, and an elevator right next to her.

She fucking knew it.

She hits the call button and leans against the wall to wait, but… she can see another clump of gold just a few feet deeper into the tunnel, and she’s down here to collect gold for the Junimos in the Community Center, isn’t she?

(If she’d ignored the voice that told her not to go into the collapsing building, she wouldn’t be down here ignoring the voice that’s telling her to stay safe, because she’d never have seen the beautiful little creatures that Liara said are forest spirits.)

(She’s had good luck ignoring that little voice lately, so why turn back now?)

She doesn’t see the shadow pacing back and forth behind the gold ore until after she’s shattered it into manageable chunks, dropping to one knee to scoop it into her backpack. She doesn’t see the shadow until it’s on her, until its creepy void-monster hands are scratching at her face.

Her sword is in her backpack, and she swings her pickaxe up into its nearly-invisible body instead.

She’s so exhausted now she can barely make contact, and it opens its jaws to take a bite out of her shoulder, and she can’t do anything but laugh.

She’s about to die, but she’s never felt this  _ alive. _


	2. Spring, Year 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three months earlier...

**Early Spring, Year 1**

Hazel Shepard is fully confident in her decision to leave her shitty desk job at JojaCorp and take over her late grandfather’s farm until she’s standing in what passes for the driveway and staring at the old house. It’s more like a shack, really, and she spent summers here when she was a kid so why didn’t she remember that it looked like _this?_

Maybe if she’d decided to move out here right after his estate had been settled, things would be in better shape. Certainly the wood of the porch wouldn’t be so dry and splintered looking, like she’ll fall through it if she stomps too hard.

She can see the barn from here and it’s half-collapsed already, part of the roof and at least one of the walls already caved in with weeds taking advantage of being left unsupervised for years.

“Well, fuck.”

Hazel kicks a rock out of her way and grabs her bags from where she dropped them in the dirt, loops the straps over her shoulder, and makes her way into the house.

The porch doesn’t give in under her weight, doesn’t even creak, but she’s going to have to refinish it soon if she doesn’t want it to get worse. The key works even if it’s hard to turn, and then she’s in the house, sneezing almost immediately at the dust her entrance stirs up.

She leaves the door open and struggles a little to raise the windows too. After just a few minutes, she has fresh air and sunlight streaming inside and, suddenly, it doesn’t seem quite so bad in here.

It’s more or less exactly as she remembers — a one-room building with a little loft she’d sleep in when she was a kid, before her dad died and her mom quit wanting to make the trip out here — with the world’s tiniest kitchen on the wall to the left, a table with two chairs near the fireplace, and an empty bed frame pushed up against the wall on the right.

It’s little, but she can work with it. It’s not all that much smaller than her studio apartment was, honestly.

She’s slept in worse conditions and been okay; she can rough it in her sleeping bag for a few days until she can get a new mattress down here.

This is fine.

She can make it work.

She _has_ to, really.

She spent the last few months at her desk job planning how she would renovate the farm instead of doing her actual work, all her attention on finally fulfilling her grandfather’s last wish. She read dozens of books and sketched out ideas and paid a graphic designer friend to make a logo so she’ll be ready when it’s time to start selling stuff at the local farmer’s market. She’s been looking forward to this. She unpacks and tapes her sketches and lists to the wall in the tiny kitchen so she’ll be able to see everything set out before her, and then she decides she might as well start right away.

First things first: the house needs to be cleaned, top to bottom. She can already feel her sinuses clogging up from all the dust, and that’s not how she wants to start her tenure here, having to find a doctor because she’s given herself a sinus infection. There are no cleaning supplies in the house, and she didn’t have enough room to bring any with her, so she hauls herself back outside and prepares to make the walk into town. She doesn’t remember it being all that long even when she was little, and she relies on her memory as much as the dirt path that heads in the right direction.

Pelican Town proper is a small collection of shops and buildings barely large enough to be considered a town anywhere else, with just two parking spots outside the general store, both empty. The second she steps foot in the town’s square, she spots an older man heading in her direction, already waving, and she changes direction to meet him in the middle of the open area. 

“You must be the new farmer!” His voice is low and comforting, and she decides she likes him immediately. Something tickles in the back of Hazel’s mind, a vague memory of him from her last visit, but she can’t quite place him. “I remember you from your visits here with your parents. I’m Anderson — the mayor of Pelican Town. I’m sorry -- I had planned to meet you at the bus stop, but I thought you were coming next week.”

“Oh,” she says, waving her hand a little dismissively. “I just got impatient. I’m sorry, but you really didn’t have to meet me.”

He nods at her, accepting the apology she didn’t anticipate having to give. “Let me give you the tour. Hazel, right?”

She doesn't particularly want a tour, she wants to get about a bucket of bleach and head back to the farm, but she doesn’t want to be rude either. She knows how small towns are— if she wants these people to be her friends and good neighbors, she’s going to have to make the absolute best first impression.

“Just Shepard. Lead the way.”

\---

“Did you hear someone moved back into that old farm?” Ashley’s sitting on the clinic’s counter instead of in her chair, but Kaidan doesn’t bother to tell her to get down. It’s partly because he knows she won’t, and partly because she brought him a coffee and he’s too busy drinking it to care about anything else.

“The old Normandy farm?” He glances over at Ashley in time to see her nod, then adds, “Maybe they’ll change the name.”

Ashley sips on her coffee with a little more self-control than he is, but as far as he knows, she’s not trying to drown out an allergy-induced headache that’s threatening to turn into a migraine.

“I don’t know; I think I like it. It’s kind of whimsical, isn’t it?” Kaidan doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just doesn’t say anything, and she fills in the silence for him like she always does. “You just don’t have any imagination, doc. It’s a pity. She quit _JojaCorp_ to come out here, give her a break.”

Kaidan rolls his eyes and drains the last of his coffee, fully intending to turn his attention away from Ashley and the new farmer to something more important — not that there’s a lot of _work_ to do, not in Pelican Town in spring, but he can almost certainly find something that’s a better use of his town than gossip.

Right?

He’s about to tell Ashley to get to work when the door to the clinic opens with a little jingle of the bell, and he turns to see who needs his help. If no one has an appointment, it could be an emergency, and he should be all stocked up on the supplies he needs…

Except it’s _not_ an emergency. It’s Mayor Anderson and someone Kaidan doesn’t know, which means she’s the new farmer, because Pelican Town doesn’t get tourists this early in the season, and she’s grinning at both of them as Anderson starts with the introductions.

“...Williams, she works here in the clinic. Kaidan Alenko is the best doctor in town. Anything happens, he’s the one who can help.”

Kaidan opens his mouth to protest that he’s the _only_ doctor in town, and if she wants anyone else she’s going to have to take the bus to Zuzu City, but Anderson just keeps talking like he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

“Shepard just moved onto the Normandy farm.” Kaidan and Ashley both nod, and Ashley makes a soft _oh_ sound of surprise like they hadn’t literally been discussing the exact same thing. “She’s going to whip that place back into shape. Right, Shepard?”

It’s hard to tell, since this is their first meeting and all, but it looks like Shepard’s smile when she flicks her gaze up to Anderson is more amused at him than anything else. Not in a cruel way, though. Just that she, for some reason, finds humor in whatever he’s saying. 

Her words are polite at least, a crisp, “Yes, sir,” leaving her mouth before she looks back and meets Kaidan’s eyes. 

She’s pretty, but she looks soft, lending credence to the rumor she’s fresh from a job at JojaCorp. It’s not really the best start for someone who wants to run a farm — not that _he_ could work on a farm, but he knows plenty who do.

She doesn’t look like them.

“It’s nice to meet you both!” She’s still grinning, and this time Kaidan’s absolutely certain she’s trying not to laugh when she adds, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing y’all around.”

The bell over the door jingles again as Anderson opens it, and Shepard gives Ashley and Kaidan a little wave before she follows him back out into the spring sun. Kaidan can just hear him saying he’ll introduce her to Joker and Edi next door when he turns back to Ashley.

“She won’t last the season,” he says.

Ashley rolls her eyes up at him. “You wanna bet on that?”

“You think she’ll stay?” he asks, arching his eyebrows up.

She shrugs with one shoulder, staring at the closed clinic door. “Yeah. It’s just a feeling. You really think she’ll leave?”

“You could say it’s just a feeling.”

Kaidan grins when Ashley wrinkles her nose at him, then rocks back and clutches at his arm when she punches him in retaliation.

“Let’s make this interesting.” She waits for him to nod before she names her terms. “If she’s still here for the Luau, you have to grow a mustache.”

“A mustache? Really?” He kind of thought she’d just want a handful of gold pieces, but when she just stares him down… he agrees, nodding, taking a moment to come up with something equally ridiculous that she’ll have to do. “Fine, but you have to let Tali color your hair.”

Ashley hesitates, just a bit, and that strengthens his resolve. She’s never been one to back down from a challenge though, so she finally holds out her hand for him. “You have yourself a deal.”

He shakes it. “I can’t _wait_ to see you with pink hair.”

“Never gonna happen. Bet you’ll look cute with a mustache though.”

He scoffs and leaves her giggling to go back to his office.

He’ll be surprised if Shepard’s still in town by the Flower Dance.

\---

There are a lot of things Hazel thought she was prepared for when it came to farming, but there’s just something unique about the bone-deep weariness that comes from spending hours doing manual labor in the sun. Most days she’s falling asleep over dinner at 7pm, her muscles aching. Before she moved here, the most physical activity she got was a semi-regular jogging session on a treadmill at the gym in her apartment complex. A couple miles, at most. Nothing compared to _this._

The land immediately surrounding the house is looking better at least, mostly clear of weeds and rocks and random sticks, and she’s managed to harvest and then replant rows of parsnips growing right out of the ground (like a real farmer!).

She’s not sure she’s ever been so proud of herself as when the first shoots poked their way up through the dirt, proof that she can probably actually do this, and if she cried a little in relief… there was no one around to see her, so does it really matter?

She has her eyes set on clearing out enough space near the house to build a coop for a few chickens — Kahlee keeps trying to talk her into buying some chicks, and they’re so little and cute that it gets harder and harder to say no each time she pops down to visit. She’s never had a chicken before — but she’s never grown any plants before other than the little houseplants she slowly killed in her cubicle, and now she has parsnips growing out of the _ground!_

If she can do that, she can keep a chicken alive. Right?

Hazel’s gotten so used to the silence out here, so different to the city, that the single bark makes her stand upright from where she was trying to get a particularly stubborn vine-y weed out of the dirt, abandoning the task completely in favor of shading her eyes.

“Hello?”

The dog barks again, a little closer, and Hazel tries to follow the noise to its source. Her boots are all tangled in the weeds and roots, and she nearly falls all the way over when she trips on a rock, but she makes it back to the cleared area of her farm without hurting herself just as the dog bursts from the tall grass and barrels right into her legs.

It’s a tiny animal, too young, all floppy ears and too-long legs, and it rolls all the way over before putting its front paws on her knee.

“Oh, hey, you,” she coos, kneeling down to pet the dog behind its ears. “Oh, you’re a sweet little thing. Where are your people?”

The dog yips again, not quite a full bark, and puts its paws back on the ground so it can sniff around Hazel’s boots. After Hazel passes inspection, the dog sits down and scratches at its ear with a back foot.

Well. Not _it’s_ ear. _Her_ ear.

She’s not wearing a collar, and she’s dirty, but she’s not _too_ skinny. She has to belong to someone in town, surely. Maybe she just got lost on a walk and ran to the first person she could hear? 

Hazel glances back at the weed she’d been fighting. Ugh. It can live for another day. This little baby is more important.

“Do you need water, sweetie? C’mon, let’s go to the house, I’ll get you a snack.”

The dog follows behind Hazel, stopping to sniff the dirt and the plants and some interesting-looking rocks, and then flops down on the porch with a heavy sigh like she knows she shouldn’t go inside when she’s so dirty.

She’s still there when Hazel comes back with a bowl of water and some dried meat from the general store, and she gobbles it all up like she’s never eaten before. Looks like it’s been a couple days for her. Poor little girl...

She lets Hazel scoop her up once the food is gone, gives her one sloppy kiss on the cheek before resting her head on Hazel’s shoulder with a heavy sigh, and she’s asleep before Hazel even makes it off her property.

This puppy belongs to _someone,_ and she’s going to figure out who.

The walk into town feels shorter than it did her first week here, even with a puppy in her arms, and she makes quick work of it. Anderson is hanging out in the square again, in the shade of one of the trees like usual, and he waves as soon as he spots her.

“Hey, Mayor! This little girl just turned up on my farm, and I’m trying to find her owner. You recognize her?”

Anderson reaches out and runs his hand over the puppy’s fur, then tucks both his hands behind his back as he shakes his head. 

“I’m afraid not, but someone has to be looking for her.”

They chat for another minute about the farm and some upcoming town events (just in case she hadn’t seen the Egg Festival flyers tucked neatly in her mailbox alongside the utility bills, she guesses) and then he waves her on to find the dog’s family.

Hazel heads into the clinic next, memories of the handsome doctor and cute nurse enough to overcome the knowledge she shouldn’t be taking a dog inside, pushing the door open with her shoulder and offering Ashley a wide smile when she pops up from behind the counter.

“Hi, can I help — oh, hi Shep — is that a _dog?”_

Hazel laughs as Ashley switches mid-sentence twice before finally getting a whole thought out, then laughs again as Ashley climbs over the counter instead of walking around, hopping right up and swinging her legs over so she can get her hands on the puppy as fast as possible.

“What’s her name? She’s adorable. Is she okay? Kaidan mostly sees human patients, but…”

“She’s fine! She’s fine; she just showed up on the farm this morning. It doesn’t look like she’s been a stray for long, so I thought I’d bring her to town and see if anyone recognizes her.”

The door to the clinic’s back rooms opens and Kaidan appears, his lab coat over his shoulders and a look of polite concern on his face that melts into genuine curiosity once he sees the dog in Hazel’s arms. He joins them, sparing a soft little smile for Hazel that makes her cheeks heat, just a bit.

He’s really sort of unfairly handsome, and here she is, a perpetual sunburn on her nose and an armful of puppy who, while unbearably cute, is definitely stinky.

“Hey, Shepard. Branching out on the farm?” He gives her another quick smile before returning his attention to the dog, and she catches herself before she can outright _giggle_ at him, turning the noise into a more respectable chuckle.

“Something like that.” She has to adjust her grip on the dog as she starts to squirm with so many hands on her. “I’m just trying to find her owner. Any ideas?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen her around here before.” Ashley’s the first one to answer, but she looks up at Kaidan as she does.

He shakes his head. “No, I’m sorry. I hope you like dogs, because you might have one now.”

Hazel chews on the inside of her lip. He’s not wrong, but… 

“I should make sure she doesn’t already have a family. If not, she has one with me.” The dog stirs enough at her voice to tuck her snout right under Hazel’s chin, and she can’t stop herself from grinning at them. “I think she likes that idea.”

She pauses, not sure what else to say. She should have thought about how weird it would be to have to make friends with fifty-odd people in this little town before she moved here.

“I should go.” 

“Wait!” Ashley hops back over the counter and pointedly ignores Kaidan’s sigh as he exchanges a look with Hazel instead. “Before you go, let’s make an appointment.”

“For what?”

Beside her, Kaidan sucks in a breath and then clears his throat, but his expression is carefully neutral when she looks up at him.

“For a checkup, ” Ashley answers, tapping away at the clinic’s computer. The machine is so old Hazel’s momentarily surprised it can still boot up, much less accept new patient information.

“Oh.” Hazel’s last checkup was probably two years ago, so she’s technically overdue. “Sure. Whenever’s okay, just not the very end of spring or the very beginning of summer.”

“How’s July fourteenth sound? It’s just after the Luau.” Ashley looks up with a grin that grows wider when she glances over and up at Kaidan.

“Ash—” Kaidan’s voice sounds like he’s warning her about something, but Hazel doesn’t have time to figure it out because he follows it up with, “see if we have any of those sunscreen samples left for her.”

“Both of those sound good.” 

Obviously _something’s_ going on here, but then Kaidan’s fingers brush over her elbow in a gentle goodbye and she forgets the weird exchange in favor of watching him walk back through the clinic’s doors, his white coat swishing around his knees.

A sudden rattle and a bang pull her attention back to Ashley, who’s holding two items out to her with a big smile on her face: one, a business card-sized slip of paper, the other, a tiny bottle of sunscreen. Hazel balances the dog in one arm and tucks the bottle and paper into the deep pocket of her work jeans. 

“Thanks! I obviously need it.”

Ashley shrugs a little, still grinning. 

“Good luck with the puppy. See you!”

“Yeah, see you.”

The bell jingles again as Hazel pushes through into the spring sunshine.

She doesn’t find the dog’s owners, but she finds a bunch of pet supplies she can’t really afford from Edi at the General Store, and she carries them home in a fresh new extra-large backpack that Joker promised would hold nearly everything she needs.

\---

Cinnamon is asleep with her nose pressed up against the door to the chicken coop when Hazel’s ready to go to the Egg Festival. The little dog has taken to life on the farm, growing bigger and happier, making herself at home each night in front of the fireplace because it’s the warmest spot in the little house. She opens one eye to peer at Hazel when she hears the door closing, then sighs because she knows that means Hazel’s going into town and people in town don’t let her in their houses anymore.

Everything around the farm looks like it’s doing okay, everything that needs to be done has been taken care of — the plants have been watered, the chickens fed, Cinnamon given several belly rubs — and so Hazel starts the short walk into town, hands tucked into the pockets of her loose cardigan. 

She’s not really sure _why_ the town is holding an Egg Festival, but she’s not about to skip it just because she doesn’t understand it. What’s she going to do — spend the next eight hours trying to clear more land so she can plant more late-season crops?

Well… okay, yeah, that _is_ what she would be doing, but wouldn’t it be better to see everyone in town? 

Hazel’s little pep talk gets her all the way to the square, where everyone seems to have already settled in. There aren’t a lot of little kids in the town, but she can see two of them chasing each other between the tables that have been set up for food, squealing and laughing as they go.

Joker has a little booth set up in the town square’s northwest corner, by the entrance closest to the path from the farm, and she stops to say hello and look through what he has. Her finances are loosening up a bit as she’s been able to sell more crops, enough for her to buy several packets of strawberry seeds without feeling guilty about it.

It’s nice. It’s a cute little festival, with banners hung off most of the nearby buildings and egg-shaped decorations on all the tables. It looks like everyone in town has turned up; even the grumpy man who rents a room from Kahlee is here, drinking punch and avoiding eye contact. She can’t remember his name, but she’s seen him walking to and from that godawful JojaMart, and to and from the saloon. She gives him a wide berth. No use in getting yelled at this early in the morning.

Tali and Garrus are standing in a tight clump with James Vega, the veteran she knows just got back from fighting in Gotoro just a few weeks before Hazel moved into the farm. His wife, a chatty yet permanently-exhausted woman named Avery, is standing arm-in-arm with Sam, watching the kids chase each other around as they squeal. The man who lives on the beach, Thane, Hazel thinks, is on his own just a few steps away with a slightly wistful look on his face.

Kahlee and Anderson are standing just a little _too_ close to each other, side by side, not _quite_ talking or making eye contact. Hazel might forget to be polite, staring at them to figure out what in the hell _that’s_ all about.

Aren’t they both single? She hasn’t missed extra hidden spouses, has she? Maybe Anderson has a wife in his attic that no one’s telling her about?

“I see you’ve caught on to Pelican Town’s _favorite_ little drama.” Hazel doesn’t jump at Ashley’s voice suddenly in her ear, but it’s a near thing. Ashley loops her arm through Hazel’s, just like Avery and Sam, and starts guiding her to where Kaidan and the man who runs the blacksmith -- Cortez, if Hazel isn’t mistaken-- are standing in comfortable silence. “They’ve been ‘secretly’ dating for years, but they think no one knows.”

“Well then, why are they hiding it?” 

Ashley deposits her next to Kaidan but doesn’t release her. Both men nod in greeting. “Who’s hiding what?” Cortez asks, instead of saying hello.

“Kahlee and Anderson.” Ashley says, leaning around Hazel to answer him, arms still securely linked like Hazel might leave. “Just filling the farmer in on the local gossip.”

Kaidan snorts, and Hazel glances up in time to see the little smirk light up his face before he hides his expression behind his little paper cup of punch. He catches her looking at him and his cheeks darken a bit, and she grins right back at him before pulling herself back together and looking back out at the festival.

“Anderson seems to think it’ll hurt their reputations,” Cortez says, “which is shit, because we _all_ know and no one cares.”

“Do _they_ know we know?” Across the square, Kahlee has leaned in to whisper something in Anderson’s ear. He chuckles and bumps her with his elbow. “They’re not being super subtle.”

“If you ask them, they’ll deny it.” Kaidan’s still looking at her when she glances back up at him, a little smile playing at the corners of his lips. “And they’ll be scandalized you even asked.”

“Huh.” Hazel doesn’t know what to do with that information, and she settles for simply filing it away a for later. Maybe she’ll need to blackmail Anderson to get a Mayoral favor or something? She also doesn’t know what else to say, but Ashley doesn’t seem willing to release her, so she can’t fall back on her tried-and-true _I should go._

She looks back up at Kaidan and sees him draining his cup. She watches his throat as he swallows.

“How’s that punch?”

Kaidan sputters on a laugh, then has to wipe the corner of his mouth with his thumb before he manages to answer, “Spiked.”

“Jack always spikes it. Want some?” Hazel barely has time to nod before Ashley’s off, making a beeline for the punch bowl. Both arms finally free, Hazel tucks her hands into her pockets and Cortez turns to Kaidan. 

“What is she up to?”

Kaidan rolls his eyes. “Who knows, with her.” 

Silence descends on the group again, and Hazel’s trying to figure out how she can slip away when Kaidan finds his words again and asks, “How’s life out on the farm? Is it what you expected?”

She lets out a little giggle and says, “Oh, no, not at all. It’s good though. I like it way more than my old job.”

“Oh, yeah? What are you growing?”

“Mostly parsnips and cauliflower, but I’m going to plant some strawberries after this. Should make a good late-spring, early-summer harvest.” An idea comes to her as Ashley heads back with four cups of punch carefully balanced in her hands. “Oh, I can make jam! I’ll have to bring some to share with you guys.”

Cortez answers her as he takes two of the cups from Ashley and hands one to Kaidan. “Strawberry jam is my favorite! Thanks, Ash.”

Hazel accepts her cup and sniffs it before taking a sip. Someone’s _definitely_ added too much vodka to this. 

They drink and chat, Hazel just sipping at her punch, because it’s been _weeks_ since she’s had alcohol and she’s not keen on getting blackout drunk on her first time out with new friends. Maybe she’d feel bolder if she accepted Anderson’s sort of open invitation to join everyone at the saloon on a Friday, but usually she’s too exhausted to walk into town by dinnertime. Most days, she can barely put her foraged goods into the box Anderson left for her to sell.

“Farmer Shepard!” Anderson’s voice cuts through their small-talk, and Hazel jumps at the sudden noise. Several cups into the spiked punch, Kaidan snickers at her under his breath. “Come join us for the egg hunt!”

Hazel just stares at him, but then Ashley’s pushing her forward and Cortez is wishing her good luck, and she’s walking across the square trying to figure out _why_ she’s expected to look for eggs when she’s about to turn thirty years old and there are _actual children_ here.

Maybe this is a weird hazing ritual? They want to see if the new farmer will actually participate in town events? If they tell her there’s a town-wide lottery for Winter Star, she’s moving back to Zuzu City, farm animals be damned.

Anderson hands her a basket for the eggs, and she stands in line to wait alongside the little Vega girl, a pale little boy with dark hair she doesn’t recognize, and a handful of other people who look like they’re also in their twenties… and, therefore, too old to participate.

They scatter when Anderson blows his whistle, Hazel moving a little slower to see what the other adults are going to do. They run off just as fast as the kids, and Hazel glances over at Anderson one last time before the little competitive gremlin in her brain tells her to _get fucking going,_ and she turns fast on her heel and takes off in the opposite direction of the other people.

She passes near enough to her little group to hear them cheer her on, and she skids around a tree to see one brilliantly painted egg tucked in a natural nest made by its roots. She scoops it up and drops it in her basket and keeps going.

There are only four eggs in her basket when Anderson calls out the fifteen second warning, and she slows to a stop as she gives up. She doesn’t know how many everyone else has gotten, but she’s absolutely positive she’s not going to win with four.

She turns to walk back to the square when she spots the Vega girl struggling to reach an egg that someone tucked into a tree knot just a couple inches too tall for her, even with the way she’s up on her tiptoes and stretching as far as she can.

“Here, sweetie.” Hazel grabs the egg and offers it to her. She studies Hazel for a second before brightening into a wide smile and taking it. She tucks it alongside the only other egg in her basket and starts to go. “What’s your name?”

“Jasmine.” She glances over her shoulder toward the square, her fingers clutching the basket.

Hazel drops to a crouch and lowers her voice. “I think I got too many eggs. Can I give you some to take to the Mayor for me?”

Jasmine’s face absolutely lights up in childish glee, falling for Hazel’s lie. She nods and inches closer to look in Hazel’s basket as Anderson blows his whistle, and together they move Hazel’s eggs into Jasmine’s basket before walking back together.

Anderson makes a big show of peering into everyone’s baskets once they line up, Jasmine vibrating with excitement at Hazel’s side. At Hazel’s other side is a woman she hasn’t spoken to all that much, but who has managed to collect five eggs of her own. She looks proud of herself, and Hazel turns a little toward Jasmine to shield her from the woman’s view.

“The winner of this year’s egg festival is… Jasmine Vega!”

The woman twitches next to Hazel, but she doesn’t say anything about losing this time, just applauds with everyone else as Jasmine squeals and then skips forward to accept the prize of a floppy sun hat from Anderson before running back to her parents. James picks her up and tosses her straight up into the air so hard that the sun hat floats down slower and Avery has to grab it before it can hit the ground after Jasmine is back on her two feet.

The group splits up then; now that the egg hunt is over, it’s like no one has a reason to wait around for the rest of the festival. She turns to head back to her farm, mentally mapping out which trees she can knock down to clear out more space for summer crops, and she nearly trips over Jasmine. The little girl wraps her arms around Hazel’s knees in a tight hug, her little face lit up in the biggest grin she can manage.

“Thank you!” She yells her message then turns and bolts back to her parents, who are halfway across to speak to Hazel too.

James has to stop to lift Jasmine up onto his shoulders, so Avery gets there first, a warmer smile on her face now than the first time they’d met, like seeing Hazel be nice to Jasmine has endeared Hazel to her just that much more. 

“Thanks for helping her,” Avery says, voice pitched low like she doesn’t want anyone to hear. “Kasumi wins _every_ year.” 

Hazel wants to ask why adults are even expected to participate in the egg hunt, but she doesn’t have time before James has caught up with them.

“Are you coming to the Stardrop? First drink’s on us.” James and, over his head, Jasmine grin at her with identical expressions on their faces, looking for all the world like James is sprouting a miniature clone from his shoulders.

She wants to say no, the vision of finally getting enough room and to plant her strawberries by the end of the week vanishing in front of her eyes, but she can _see_ the Stardrop from where she’s standing, and Kaidan’s just about to walk through the door. He meets her gaze and pauses mid-step, then he smiles and inclines his head at her before stepping out of view.

She turns her attention back to the Vega family. “I’d love to.”

**Mid-Spring, Year 1**

Rainy days on the farm mean less work for Hazel. She doesn’t have to water the plants, she doesn’t have to add water to Cinnamon’s bowl, she doesn’t have to stand outside and watch the weeds grow. She can just collect eggs from the ladies in the coop without worrying about the hens either -- Basil, Cilantro, and Clove don’t like the rain and barely notice when she walks in or when she leaves -- and then she’ll have all her chores done and it’ll only be eight a.m.

She’s not sure what to do with the rest of her day, now. It’s too early to go into town for shopping or selling, because nothing opens before nine, and she’s too alert to go back to sleep. She settles for taking a shower just a little too long and a little too hot before getting dressed in clothes that are clean and comfortable and definitely not designed for farm work. 

Gramps had left a lot of possessions around the farmhouse, even after it had been picked through as part of settling his estate. Most of it was shoved up in the loft, and she hasn’t had the time or energy to go through any of it.

Today, though…

Hazel climbs up the ladder and rolls up the thin sleeves of her ratty old Solarion Chronicles sweatshirt and gets to work. Most of the boxes are just full of old papers nobody wanted; receipts, records of crops and sales, things that she glances at and then pushes aside to keep going.

One box holds a stack of old letters with her grandmother’s name on them, all tied together with a ribbon with a dried flower tucked through the bow. The postage stamps are from all over Ferngill, sometimes from as far away as Gotoro, and she sets those aside to take downstairs, along with the ancient photo album tucked into the same box.

They must have really loved each other, keeping those things. It breaks her heart all over again to think of him living out the last years of his life in this little house, all by himself, when they spent so long married.

Another box holds nothing more than a smaller box and an old notebook. She pulls them both out and opens the little box first.

“Oh, _shit.”_

She nearly drops it when she sees it holds a dagger, a real dagger, in a sheath. She pulls it out and tests the tip of it, like an idiot, and cuts herself, also like an idiot. She puts the dagger back away and tucks her thumb into her mouth to stop the bleeding before she opens the notebook.

On the first page is a sketch of an apple… No. It’s a little creature, _shaped_ like an apple, with spindly little arms and a leaf on its head, and a tiny smile on its face. It’s a beautifully done piece, and she wishes she knew what it was of. Gramps has written “Junimo” next to it, but that’s it. 

Maybe her love of sci-fi came from him after all.

There are other sketches on the next pages, all beautifully detailed, of round little monsters, bats, crabs with rocks on their backs instead of shells, ghosts, wasps and worms… She’s never seen these sorts of creatures in her entire life, and she traces her fingers over the faded pages with a reverence she rarely feels for anything.

As she goes to close the notebook again, a piece of paper falls out and lands on the dagger box. When she picks it up and turns it over, she sees that it’s a business card for something called the Pelican Town Adventurer’s League.

Huh.

She can still hear the rain pattering against the roof of the cabin, louder up here, and she smiles.

Maybe it’s time to pay them a visit.

Hazel heads into town with her raincoat on tight and its hood pulled low over her face. The incessant rain is louder against the hood than it was in the house, but she doesn’t own an umbrella, so this will have to do.

The dirt road between her farm and the town proper is turning to mud at the edges, despite how tight-packed it had seemed, and she wishes she’d stopped to put on her farming boots, even though they’re covered in chicken shit and who knows what else from traipsing around in the woods with them on. She’d been embarrassed by the state of them, but now she misses their dry warmth.

The town is shut tight against the rain, and no one is outside. She’s grateful for the silence as she slips through and turns to take the path north into the mountains, keeping her hood low over her face as though it affords her any anonymity when everyone knows everyone here.

She still hasn’t gotten used to that.

The old Community Center is still there, boarded up like the last time she saw it, and it inspires the same little pang of disappointment it always does. She used to love playing in the kids room and watching the fish swim in slow circles in the tank, and now it’s gone into even worse disrepair than her grandfather’s farm.

Almost at the top of the hill, not quite as out of breath as she was the first time she made this trek, she passes Garrus and Tali’s place without going in, not quite willing yet (despite Tali’s insistence that it’s okay, and she should, and does she want to stay for dinner?) to barge into their house when she’s not there to buy something, especially today when she’s already covered in mud and on a mission.

Instead, she heads up the soggy path by the lake and up, pausing to make sure the little wooden bridge looks solid before she tries to walk past it. She got a note in her mailbox a while ago that JojaCorp cleared the landslide, and even though she doesn’t know _what the fuck_ they were doing to _cause_ a _landslide_ in the first place… she’s curious. 

Hazel pauses at the entrance to the mine and peers into the darkness, but she can’t see anything even with how dim it is outside.It’s like something inside is calling her in, and she takes a full step into the shadows before shaking herself and pulling away. She’s not here for the mine, she’s here for the Adventurer’s Guild, whatever that is.

Past the mine, past a huge oak tree, is a house tucked against the mountain, almost protected by the looming stone. A sign on the outside proclaims it the Adventurer’s Guild she’s looking for: _open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m._ A glance at her watch lets her know it’s just about noon, so she lets herself inside.

There’s a little bell over the door that jingles when she walks in, and two heads swivel around to look at her as their conversation ceases. 

“Uh, hi,” she says, trying to square her shoulders and push her hood back at the same time. She offers the two men what she hopes is a winning smile and steps further into the room. “I’m Hazel Shepard. I just moved into the old farm.”

The man behind the desk blinks at her -- his face is scarred significantly on one side, rough stitches and poorly-healed cuts partly covered by an eyepatch -- and then he smiles and leans forward a bit.

“Oh, the old Normandy farm? We heard someone had moved back in over there. It’s about time you came to see us.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. Wait here.” He disappears and leaves Hazel alone with the second man, so she turns her attention to him instead.

He’s leaned back in his chair, legs crossed with one ankle on the opposite knee, and he’s grinning at her like he knows exactly what’s happening here even though she doesn’t yet. They look enough alike that she’s sure they’re related, even though the younger man isn’t scarred at all.

“It’s been hard to get in and out with that landslide in the way,” he says. “Name’s Bain. That’s Zaeed.”

“Oh. Nice to meet you.” It’s weird, standing in the middle of what purports to be an Adventurer’s Guild, on the outskirts of a sleepy little farming town, miles away from the city where weirdos tend to find a place to call home.

What is it about Pelican Town that keeps these men here?

Visions of the monsters in her grandfather’s journal flit behind her eyelids, and she dismisses them immediately.

There’s no way.

No way.

Zaeed pushes his way back into the front of the house with a long but narrow cardboard box in his hands. He puts it down on the counter and Hazel drifts closer, curious, watching with rapt attention as he pulls out a dagger of his own to cut the tape holding it closed.

The tape parts like water against the dagger’s sharp edge. Inside is a sword -- not a dagger, but a whole sword -- a ring, and a letter.

“Here you go.” Zaeed’s rough voice makes her flinch, but she can’t look away from that sword. She’s never wanted to hold a sword before, but now… “When it got to where he couldn’t keep going down into the mines, he dropped this off, said his granddaughter would come by one day and to give it to her.”

Her fingers itch to take it. She forces herself to look up to meet Zaeed’s eye. “Why didn’t he just leave it in the house?”

Zaeed shrugs. “He said you’d get it when you were ready. Weren’t my job to argue with him.”

She gives in and takes the box, sliding it closer across the counter. She opens the letter first, ripping the envelope open along the side, and pulls out the letter. It’s written in the same hand as the letter telling her she was the new owner of the farm, the same hand that left notes in the journal, but the letters are more solid, less shaky.

_My dearest Hazel,_

_You’re probably wondering what’s going on. I never told you about the mines, but I told you about the forest spirits, the Junimos, who protect the valley. I told you about the monsters too, the slimes and the bats and the flies, until your parents told me I gave you nightmares._

_I’m sorry, little bug, I never meant to frighten you._

_For as long as I could, I worked to protect the Junimos from the things they couldn’t fight. I protected them so they could protect us, but I’m afraid I’m growing too weak, too old, to continue doing what I need to do._

_You’re going to take over the farm one day. I know you will. You felt more at home here than you ever felt in Zuzu City, no matter what your parents say, and you can become the Junimo’s champion, if you’re willing._

_Go into the mines. Go into the Community Center._

_Trust me._

_I love you._

_Gramps_

Zaeed and Bain are both staring at her when she’s doing reading, and she has to blink hard to clear her vision. She wants to cry, holding this, remembering with sudden, painful clarity how she used to sit curled up with him in his old armchair as he told her about the forest spirits that protected the valley, about the creatures from the void who want to destroy it. 

She doesn't remember the nightmares her parents said she had, but she wishes they hadn’t told him to cut it out with the stories. 

She’d know more now if she hadn’t.

Zaeed’s voice interrupts her spiraling thoughts. “If you can kill ten creatures in the mines, we’ll see about setting you up as a real adventurer. Until then…” He trails off, dismissal obvious. 

Hazel tucks the letter back into the envelope, then puts that inside her raincoat where it won’t get wet. She only hesitates a second before slipping the ring on her thumb and grabbing up the sword.

“I should go.”

And she does, straight to the mines, where the ring on her thumb starts to glow, and she’s certain she was meant to climb down the ladder and start exploring.

The first floor of the mine is really just one big, open room, held up at the corners with support beams and littered with rocks. Hazel tests the weight of one with her hands, leaning down and tugging at it until the skin of her fingers scrapes across the rough edge. It shifts, maybe an inch, but then that’s all she can manage.

She frowns and stares down at it, hands on her hips, disappointed in herself.

She should have brought the pickaxe she uses to clear boulders on the farm.

...next time. She’ll bring it next time.

She wanders in a slow circle, wondering how there could be monsters in here when there aren’t any tunnels or exits. Surely they didn’t just mine down twenty feet and give up, right? How could her grandfather have spent so much time down here if this is it?

Where are the monsters from his journal?

There’s a big boulder at the back of the room, casting a harsh shadow until she gets her glow ring behind it enough to see there’s another ladder down here, hidden far from the first entrance for no apparent reason.

She doesn’t even hesitate before she climbs down this one too, only taking the time to make sure her dagger and sword are safely tucked into her belt under her raincoat before she lowers herself into the shaft.

This floor is much like the one above, cleared out by the same hands, but there are at least two branches off the main room for her to explore… and one of the closest rocks to her is glittering with… something. She kneels down to get a good look, touching the shiny sections of rock only to realize they’re cool to the touch, like metal.

Copper, maybe?

Hope rises up in her and she squashes it down, visions of selling the copper to upgrade her farm swimming behind her eyes. How much is down here? Is it just this one node? How did it get overlooked?

She hops back to her feet and heads deeper into the mine, her ring casting a wide glow around her, and she tries to look at each rock to see if there’s more copper down here, hardly daring to hope, counting at least five more nodes before she turns the first corner. She breaks into a jog as she goes, excitement building with each step.

This is unbelievable. Why hasn’t anyone come down to clear this place out yet?

She turns another corner and skids to a stop. 

There’s a little round blob in the middle of the path ahead, bouncing a little up and down like it’s breathing. There’s a smaller blob on top of its head, almost floating in the air like a little marker of its location.

It doesn’t seem to notice her yet, so she takes a step back, but her foot hits one of the smaller rocks and sends it skittering across the floor.

The little blob turns and looks at her with two huge, black eyes in its little green body.

She takes another step back and it follows her, moving without limbs, just bounding forward like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Instinct takes over and she screams, taking another step back with her arms held out for balance. The little monster shrinks into itself, and for a second she thinks she’s scared it away… and then it launches itself at her, slamming into her knees with a wet squelching sound.

She kicks it, and its little body flies back through the air and bounces off the wall. It barely even notices the motion, just shrinking into itself once more to bound forward. It’s too far away this time, and it doesn’t quite make it to her, so she has the space to kick it again before it touches her.

Her sword thumps against her thigh as she moves her leg, and for a second she can’t remember what it is.

The next time the slime jumps at her, she’s ready, and it impales itself on the rusty point of metal. It melts, goo running off the end of the sword and dripping onto the stone, and Hazel swallows a rush of saliva in her mouth as nausea rolls through her.

A monster.

A little slime monster.

She _killed_ it.

She feels dizzy, sick, and she keeps the sword in her hand as she turns and moves back to the ladder to go up.

She’s made it far enough today.

She can come back… some other time… she can bring her pickaxe and a bag and she can gather up some ore… Cortez will probably buy it from her, right?

The first ladder doesn’t give her any trouble, but the second one seems to sway in her grip. She growls at it, bares her teeth at the wood and metal like that will make it stay still, and she hauls herself up through the hole in the ground to the mine’s entrance.

It’s still raining, the sky dark even though it’s still mid-afternoon. Hazel stares at the rain for too long, confused, and when she starts to walk again the world twists and turns and she stops to vomit in a bush.

This… is bad.

She didn’t feel hurt when the little slime got her, but she feels _wrong,_ everything’s gross.

She needs help.

Kaidan.

He’ll be at the clinic still. 

He can help her.

She heads that way, nearly tumbling off the edge of the path, feet catching on tiny rocks and divots in the mud. Her shoes and jeans are soaked up to her knees, her fingers chilled. She can’t stop shivering, but she can’t stop walking either.

Why is the clinic so far away?

She doesn’t pass anyone on her way into town, doesn’t see anyone at the river or by the Community Center or in the square.

The clinic door is unlocked, and she pushes her way in, clinging to the knob like it’s going to keep her upright.

The bell jingles above her head.

Ashley behind the desk. Kaidan doesn’t call out to her.

She lets herself fall from the front door to the counter, then uses the counter to hold herself up as she moves forward through the double swinging doors that separate the waiting room from the office proper.

It’s dark back here, but her ring keeps glowing, and she leans against the wall as she moves deeper into the clinic. A light grabs her attention from under a closed door, and she staggers toward it.

That door opens when she pushes on it too, and she has just enough time to smile at the way Kaidan’s mouth opens in a perfect O when he sees her before everything goes dark.

\---

Kaidan can’t exactly predict when he’ll get a migraine, but he usually has a couple of hours warning before one fully develops. Sometimes that’s enough time for him to fight it off with caffeine and over-the-counter medicine, so he gets a bad headache instead of something that makes him want to sleep in pitch blackness for forty-eight hours until he doesn’t want to saw off his own head anymore.

He felt one coming on this morning and blamed the weather, the pressure and the humidity fucking with his sinuses until he can see sparks in his vision and a dull ache behind his left eye that gets sharper with every breath.

At least he doesn’t have any appointments today, and it isn’t Ashley’s day to work at the counter, so he’s able to drink coffee and sit with the lights dimmed and hope that nothing catastrophic happens before he can ease himself back from the brink.

Kaidan thought he was going to be successful before Shepard bursts into his office, dripping wet, muddy, literally glowing like an angel as she smiles at him. He doesn’t know what to feel about her sudden appearance -- happy to see her or horrified by her wheezing breaths or what -- so he just gapes at her, and then he slams his coffee mug onto his desk when she pitches forward and collapses onto the tile.

He jumps to his feet fast enough to make his headache throb harder behind his eyes, but that doesn’t matter when Shepard’s unconscious on his floor. She doesn’t have any obvious wounds, but her breathing is incredibly shallow, her pulse rapid and weak, her skin too warm, and she smells of vomit over the mud and rainwater.

An allergic reaction to… something. If she’d come in for her check up already, he’d _know_ if she had any allergies, but as it is…

“What did you get yourself into, Shepard?”

He manages to get her from his office into the exam area into one of the beds and pushes away that lance of fear behind the professionalism ingrained in him during medical school. He hangs her raincoat up to get it out of the way and nods when he finds her sword and dagger hidden under it.

She’s been in the mines.

He’s seen this before, or something like it from Zaeed and Bain.

Kaidan mechanically goes through the treatments that will stop the reaction, the adrenaline and the antihistamine and the cortisol and the oxygen, and then he leaves Shepard alone to rest. He can hear the beeping of the machines from just about anywhere in the little clinic, and he keeps his ears trained on the sound as he makes himself a fresh coffee and finally sits back down, body shaking.

He can never, ever get used to people bursting into the clinic with emergencies. He hates it.

He hates it, but he’s _glad_ he’s here, glad the little town has someone around who can act quickly enough when something bad happens that’s _not_ the seasonal flu. The old doctor would have been too old to move her from the office to the exam room. What would he have done? Just given her the epinephrine right there on the floor?

No. Kaidan might hate the heart-wrenching sight of someone on the verge of death, but he’s happy he can do so much to pull them back.

Now he just has to wait.

And wait.

And _wait_.

By the time Shepard wakes up, Kaidan’s had so much coffee that he can feel the shakes coming on, and he’s forced himself to fill a glass of water from the tap to drink. Her monitor beeps from the other room and he hears her mutter “what the fuck” just before he pulls the privacy curtain aside so he can talk to her.

She’s trying to pull the nasal cannula from around her face, nose all screwed up in irritation, but she quits as soon as she sees him, flashing him the same guilty look all his patients give him when they realize he’s caught them doing something they shouldn’t.

At least she hasn’t ripped out her IV like Zaeed always does.

“How are you feeling?” She _looks_ better at least, and the last bag of fluids is nearly empty. He squeezes it for good measure and watches her from the side of her bed.

She scratches absently at the tape holding the needle in, but doesn’t move to pull it up. “Uh. Embarrassed. What happened exactly?”

Kaidan takes a step back and sits in the closest chair so he’s not hovering over her. “You busted into my office in the middle of going into anaphylactic shock. If you’d been a few minutes slower, you probably wouldn’t have made it.”

Her fingers go still on the tape and she chews at her lower lip, silent.

He looks at the raincoat hanging on the wall, hiding the sword and dagger, and then looks back at her. “You have to be more careful in the mines.”

That gets her attention. Her gaze snaps back up to his and her face turns a surprisingly deep shade of red.

“You know about the mines?”

“I know what it looks like when an adventurer can’t treat something on their own and drags themselves into town for my help,” Kaidan says, smiling a little despite himself. “I’m surprised you went down there at all.”

The mines are dangerous. No one should go into the mines. Shepard never seemed foolhardy or like someone who was after her next adrenaline rush. That kind of person wasn’t the same kind of person who would take over a run-down farm and adopt chickens from Kahlee, or who would help a little girl win an egg hunt.

She looks away from him, shoulders hunching a little. “I was just curious.”

Kaidan frowns. He hadn’t meant to embarrass her. “Just be more careful next time. Do you know what you’re allergic to? I can give you an epipen if it’s something you’re likely to run into again.”

She hesitates. He _sees_ her hesitate.

But she shakes her head.

“I don’t think so. Is this done yet?” She tugs a little at the IV line connected to the bag, and he stands up again to check. She waits until he puts on a pair of nitrile gloves to speak again, turning her head away as he pulls the needle from her arm and presses a cotton ball against the site. “How much do I owe you?”

He tapes down the cotton with more precision than he needs to before he answers. “I haven’t done the paperwork yet.”

She grunts, either in acknowledgement of his words or in response to him removing the nasal cannula, then says, “Well. I’ll get out of your hair and swing back by to settle up.”

Kaidan hesitates.

She can’t go back to the mines. She needs to stay safe. He _wants_ her to stay safe.

No. She’s her own person, and he has no right to tell her what to do. She can make her own choices.

He barely knows her; they’ve only had a few conversations, the most recent one eased by post-festival drinks at the saloon, but there’s definitely more worry here than he feels for any of his other patients. He barely cares what Zaeed gets up to, much as he’s loath to admit it.

“Can you get home by yourself?”

She stands up as she backs away, and she flashes him a self-satisfied smile. She’s got this.

“Yep. Thanks for patching me up, Kaidan.”

She gathers her things and walks out. It’s long past sundown, and the rain has stopped, so she just wraps her coat around her weapons and heads out. She looks over her shoulder and waves at him once she’s on the other side of the square, and he waves back, suddenly conscious of watching her walk away.

He can’t help but notice she didn’t say anything about being more careful. 

\---

Kaidan’s dry-mouthed and weak the next morning, running on five hours of sleep and well more than the recommended amount of caffeine. Ashley takes one look at him when she shows up for work and demands to know what’s wrong with him, because if it’s a migraine he should go sleep upstairs and she’ll get him if he’s needed.

“Shepard came in yesterday afternoon,” he admits, keeping his spine straighter than he wants and his hands clamped around a reusable water bottle instead of the eight hundredth cup of coffee he wants. “Spent several hours in the clinic.”

“Oh?” Ashley waggles her eyebrows at him, a grin stretching across her face.

He rolls his eyes.

“Can you just type up my notes, please? I’ll be in my office.” 

He’s too tired to deal with this. Ashley doesn’t care. 

“She likes you, though! I can’t _wait_ to see you with a mustache.”

Kaidan ignores her and goes back to his office and sits down behind his desk and tries not to think about what Ashley said. It doesn’t matter if Shepard _likes_ him or not, because she’s not sticking around. 

No one moves to Pelican Town and _actually_ stays, not long-term, not working all by themselves on a farm like Shepard is.

If she had someone to help her…

No.

He flips open the Ferngill Journal of Medicine and makes himself sit still and read, despite how his mind wanders to the way Shepard smiled at him before she collapsed, the shade her skin turned when she blushed, the deep brown of her eyes, even darker than his. He reads despite the undercurrent of anxiety that wants him to check on her, the undercurrent of distraction that keeps his leg bouncing under his desk and makes him reread the same convoluted sentence over and over before he can understand it.

It’s almost a relief when the bell jingles, signaling a visit to the clinic. He’s on his feet before he knows it, jumping up and heading for the waiting room before he has time to think about it.

He just… needs a distraction. A way out of his head, to forget the lingering aftereffects of his migraine and the swirling of his thoughts.

Shepard standing in front of the counter with a basketful of jars is… not the best distraction.

Actually, it’s sort of the worst.

“I come bearing gifts!” 

She doesn’t look like she spent half the day yesterday in the mines and the other half recovering from it. She’s happy and healthy, smiling in a pair of overalls and rubber boots as though she came right here from working on the farm. She glances over at him as he stands in the doorway, eyes dipping and then meeting his in a way that makes his cheeks feel hot before she looks back at Ashley like nothing happened.

“I hope you like pickles! It’s… basically all I have right now, but I should have strawberry jam pretty soon.” She puts the basket down on the counter and starts setting out the jars. “It’s the least I can do after… everything.” She looks right at Kaidan, then, meeting his gaze head-on so he’ll know what she means.

After scaring the _shit_ out of him.

After he saved her life.

After she refused to be careful.

Shepard looks back at Ashley.

“And I hear there’s going to be a bill?”

Kaidan looks at Ashley only to realize she’s been staring right back at him, eyes wide and amused and far too observant for his comfort. She jumps when Shepard’s words sink in, and turns to the farmer with a somewhat sheepish expression.

“Yeah, hang on.”

Kaidan doesn’t need to be here for this. It’s why he hired Ashley. He turns to go, but Shepard’s voice calls him back.

“You don’t like pickles, Kaidan?”

He pauses, then turns, then picks up one jar of pickles, then another when she shoves it at him. “Thank you.”

She beams, eyes soft, looking for all the world like he hadn’t pulled her back from the brink of death yesterday.

“Let me know how you find them. I can bring more.”

He nods at her, and he’s back in his office before he can hear Ashley tell her the total she owes.

The pickles are delicious enough that he doesn’t care when Ashley bursts into his office to demand he start growing out his mustache since Shepard is _obviously_ staying well after the Luau.

He doesn’t even care what she says.

Just for today… just for right now, he’s happy.

\---

Despite the setback of the 1,000 gold medical bill, Hazel’s able to pay to get a sprinkler system set up on her land, just enough to water the crops she already has, with room to expand in the future.

Going back into the mines helps.

Cortez is floored when she first brings a bag full of raw copper ore into his little blacksmith shop. His mouth literally falls open when he sees it, and he gently suggests she learn to smelt the ore into bars on her own because they’re worth more on selling them. 

She doesn’t want to take the time right now.

She trusts him to be honest with her when he sells the ores on to the next person, probably some rich fuck in Zuzu City.

There are other things in the mines too, besides the slimes (which she avoids at all costs) and the copper ore. She finds weird minerals she doesn’t recognize, little statues, fossils, and old tools, and she brings them to the museum to see if Sam knows what they are.

She always, always does.

She even starts to pay Hazel for bringing them in.

Despite her burning shame at Kaidan’s censure, and her unwillingness to admit she _should_ have been more careful in the mines… she is. She avoids the slimes, is on guard about the bats that fly in from overhead, and she doesn’t get too hurt again. Once she starts feeling weird, or dizzy, or even just tired or hungry, she leaves to heal up.

There’s an elevator entrance every five levels or so, and that helps.

Kaidan was so disappointed in her for getting mixed up in all this. She’s not the kind of person he’d expect in the mines… too soft from her time at JojaCorp, too weak, too… _something_ to be the kind of person who can regularly dive deep into these abandoned caverns and come out whole and hale.

She’s happy to prove him wrong, even if he doesn’t know.

She’s strong enough to do this, after all.

Right?

**Late Spring, Year 1**

Kaidan wakes up on Wednesday morning with a building sense of dread in his gut that follows him through his first cup of coffee, through breakfast, through his second cup of coffee, and down into the clinic to open up for the day. Something terrible is going to happen today, and he doesn’t know what it is or where to look out for it…

The clinic door slamming open makes him jump to his feet behind the counter, but it’s just Ashley, even though it’s not her day to work, and she’s smirking at him like she’s caught him out at something, and then…

There are flowers in her hair, a flowy white dress looking awkward on her frame, and he remembers.

The Flower Dance.

“Shit.”

Her smirk only grows. “Suit up, K. We have twenty minutes.”

“I really can’t--”

“You really can, you have to, and you will. You have no appointments, and if anyone gets hurt it’ll be in the Cindersap, and being at the dance will mean you’re close enough to help.” She claps her hands. “Let’s _go.”_

Grumbling, he does, going back upstairs to his little apartment and putting on the blue suit he only wears once a year. If it’s a little tighter around the middle this year than last year, well. He’s getting older, and sitting in the clinic all day isn’t going to help things. He should really walk around more, maybe go down to the beach once a day, just to keep his blood flowing. He shouldn’t be lecturing people about getting their thirty minutes of exercise a day when he so clearly doesn’t.

Ashley’s still waiting for him downstairs, and she pins a spring daisy to his lapel like they’re going to prom together. She chuckles when Kaidan grumbles at her, then locks her fingers around his elbow and _tugs_ like she’s sure he’s going to change his mind now that he’s all dressed up and just hide in the clinic until the festival is over.

This is his _least_ favorite one, after Spirit’s Eve, so maybe she’s not overreacting, actually.

They enter the Cindersap Forest just behind the Vegas and Sam, and Ashley starts dragging him faster to catch up. There’s no point fighting with her, so he pushes himself into a jog and tries to ignore the sweat that breaks out along his hairline as he does.

To his credit, James looks just as uncomfortable stuffed into the traditional blue suit as Kaidan feels, the starchy material straining across his broad shoulders. Kaidan pretends he didn’t notice as James claps him on the back and Ashley finally releases him so she can stand next to Sam instead.

“Hi, Dr. Alenko! Are you going to dance today?” Jasmine is walking on James’ other side, and she leans around her mountain of a father to look up at Kaidan, and he smiles back at her.

“Yes ma’am, that’s what Miss Ashley tells me.”

Jasmine looks from him to Ashley and back, then up at James. “Daddy, pick me up.”

“You’re going to get too big for me to carry you around one of these days,” James says, but he picks her up anyway, balancing her against his front with both arms. Jasmine loops her arms around his neck and then pats his cheek. 

“You can still carry Mama, and she’s way bigger than me.”

James flashes Kaidan a conspiratorial grin that makes him blush against his will, but they’re saved from the rest of the conversation by finally arriving at the clearing decorated for the festival.

He hates this.

Everyone’s here, their mingled voices somehow loud even out here in the forest. Joker’s set up by the entrance with a little stand of some “special goods” that are really just the same things he offers every year, nothing Kaidan ever needs. It even looks like it’s the same scarecrow standing up at the back as every other year, because no one seems to want a scarecrow with pigtails hanging out in their yard.

Well, except one person…

Kaidan wanders away from James and Jasmine and doesn’t even pretend to himself that he’s not looking for Shepard. He’s only seen her in passing since she came to give him pickles, and he hasn’t even had a chance to tell her how good they were.

He doesn’t see her. 

He’s not even sure if this is the kind of thing Shepard would enjoy, especially after she’d been roped into the egg hunt at the last festival. Maybe she’s decided the town festivals aren’t her thing and she’s going to stop coming to them.

He shakes his head and turns to go find Ashley, because if he spends too much time standing by himself someone’s going to come up to him with some medical questions that they should really have made an appointment for, and he doesn’t want to spend all day wearing this suit _and_ being a doctor.

At first it’s a pleasant surprise to see that Ashley’s talking to Shepard, but that drains away as he gets closer to see Shepard has a bandage wrapped over most of her left forearm, thick and white and obvious against the brown of her skin. He’s frowning at it when she catches his eye, and she flashes him that same guilty look from the clinic.

That isn’t a farming injury.

She’s been in the mines again.

“Hey, Kaidan!” The guilty look is gone, replaced by a little grin as she tucks her arms behind her back. “How’d those pickles treat you?”

“Oh,” Kaidan says, thrown off by the question. He has to switch gears, forget what he was going to say about her arm and find a compliment for her pickles. “They were delicious.”

Her smile lights up into something bright and genuine, and he finds himself drifting forward even as Ashley slips away. 

“Good! I’ll have more ready soon. They’re still, uh, pickling.”

It’s practically causing him physical pain to _not_ know what kind of wound she’s hiding. It obviously can’t be _bad_ , because she’s up and she’s here and she didn’t collapse in his clinic, but it’s obviously not _good,_ because then she wouldn’t have bandaged it up like she did.

“I’m happy to buy all the pickles you can make, but what happened to your arm?”

“You don’t have to _buy_ them from me,” she says, eyebrows drawing together but not, he notices, moving her arms back in front of her. “Sometimes there are perks to being friends, right?”

He makes a noise that’s half sigh, half laugh. 

“Like being able to show me what happened?”

She cocks her head to the side and narrows her eyes at him, but she’s still grinning.

“Hmm… nope.” She pops the P, and he’s not sure if he should laugh or scold her. “Looks like Ashley’s trying to get your attention.” She points over his shoulder with her good arm, and he turns to look. Ashley’s waving him over, and he can see beyond her that everyone’s starting to line up for the dance.

When he turns back to apologize, Shepard’s already slipped away.

Well. He can’t exactly _make_ her accept his help, can he? Even if it would have gotten him out of the dance...

Kaidan takes his spot next to Ashley, between Cortez and James, and forces his feet to follow the steps. He’s been dancing across from Ashley since his first Flower Dance, when she’d warned him two weeks in advance so he’d have time to learn the steps and dread it every day, but he doesn’t think it was ever romantic on her part, just her doing her best to make sure her new boss felt at home in Pelican Town. He’s never asked, but she was probably worried he’d go back to Zuzu City and leave the town without a doctor, and her without a job.

By the time the dance is done, he’s uncomfortably warm, ready to duck out early to go back to the relative coolness of the clinic. He waves at Ashley, who rolls her eyes at him, and then turns to head back when his gaze snags on Shepard once more. She’s off to the side, talking to Wrex, gesturing widely with her hands as he booms with laughter.

Kaidan smiles at the sight, then frowns and finds himself walking toward them before he has time to consciously order his feet to change direction.

“Your arm is bleeding.” He snags her wrist mid-gesture, and she lets him hold it still so he can see the bloom of red on the otherwise pristine bandage. When he looks up, her cheeks are red too, embarrassed, probably, that he’s caught her injured again instead of letting it go.

Wrex rumbles out a chuckle. “Guess you weren’t kidding about those bugs, huh, kid.”

Shepard sends Kaidan a wide-eyed look, but doesn’t try to pull away, she just stands there with her wrist in his hand and keeps blushing.

“Will you please come back to the clinic so I can get this cleaned up for you?”

Shepard looks up at Wrex before she finally nods at Kaidan, and it’s only now that he realizes he’s still holding her wrist, so he lets go and tucks his hands into his pockets instead. She says goodbye to Wrex as he starts to walk back, and then after a second she’s caught up with him, elbow just _barely_ bumping into his before she gives him more space.

“I didn’t want to make you leave the festival,” she says, voice pitched low as they squeeze past Joker’s stall. “I’m really fine.”

He doesn’t respond right away, weighing his words instead. 

“When did you get hurt?”

“Uhh… Monday?”

If it’s been two days since that happened, it shouldn’t still be bleeding. He frowns at her, but she’s not really looking at him, staring straight ahead as they walk up the path.

“You might need stitches, Shepard.”

She heaves a sigh but doesn’t look at him. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

Silence follows them for the rest of the walk, but it doesn’t feel particularly uncomfortable. It just is. When he glances over at her, she has a little smile on her face despite the way she’s started cradling her injured arm, her eyes scanning the trees as they pass them.

Kaidan pushes the clinic door open and lets Shepard go through first with his hand on the small of her back. She lets him guide her back to his office, and then sits on the table without him prompting. He hangs up his suit jacket and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt before he washes his hands and pulls on a pair of gloves, and when he turns back around, Shepard’s staring at him with red cheeks.

“Are you feeling warm? Do you have a fever?”

“What?” Her eyes snap from his hands to his face, and the blush darkens. “No. I don’t think so.”

He frowns and makes a mental note to check, but pulls the rolling stool up to the edge of the cot instead. Shepard holds out her arm obediently, watching with rapt attention as he starts unraveling the bandage.

It takes a minute. She’s really used a _lot_ of gauze here, far more than he would have, but once he gets enough of it gone he can see why. The wound must have been bleeding most of the morning, and the lowest layers are dark with congealed blood. 

“Ah, shit.”

He quirks a smile, glancing up to see her looking at the floor instead. 

“Squeamish?”

“I probably won’t throw up on you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He throws the entirety of the ruined bandage into the trash. “If you ruined this suit, you’d be doing everyone a favor.”

She laughs at that, the sound light and girlish, and he can’t help his answering grin. 

“Let me get this cleaned up, and we can see what we’re working with. Have you had stitches before?” Small talk usually helps patients keep their minds off what’s happening, especially in this kind of situation when they need more than just their vitals measured.

“Yeah.” She touches her eyebrow with her free hand and he glances up to see a faint scar stretching to the bridge of her nose. “Busted my head open trying to do a trick on the monkey bars.”

He smiles as he disinfects the cut. It’s not as long as he thought it would be, but it’s deep. She’ll definitely need stitches. 

“Fall off a lot of playground equipment as a kid?”

“I was sixteen.”

She’s already looking at him when he glances up, their faces just inches apart. She doesn’t pull away, just looks at him with a soft smile that disappears with a hiss when he hits a sore spot on her arm. 

“Sorry.” 

He pushes his stool away, puts some distance between them so he can pull himself back together so she won’t notice the blush creeping across his face. He barely knows her, and he’s supposed to be fixing her arm, not… not getting flustered standing too close to a beautiful woman. “Do you have any allergies?”

There’s a little pause before she answers, like she’s surprised by the change of topic, but she finally says “no.”

“Good. You just need a few stitches. I’ll numb the area first, then you can get out of here.”

She turns away from the shot but doesn’t flinch, flexing her fingers as soon as it’s done. “Tired of me already?”

He gives her a half-smile and shakes his head.

“Just figured you have more important things to do than sit around and watch me sew your skin back together. How’s that feel?”

She blinks, then frowns down at her arm. 

“Numb.”

“Okay. Let me know if you, ah, feel the need to ruin my suit.”

There’s a very long pause after that as he focuses on keeping his stitches neat. She stays quiet as he re-bandages her wound, standing up when he finishes.

“I’ll bring pickles tomorrow when I can pay you for this,” she says He opens his mouth to argue, to tell her she doesn’t have to pay him for a few stitches and to stop giving away her products, but she doesn’t give him a chance: “thanks again. Sorry I dragged you away from the festival.”

She starts moving toward the front door, and he follows her, unable to stop himself even though he has an exam room to clean.

“You didn’t. If anything, I dragged _you.”_

“Oh, well, in that case.” She grins and shrugs, then hesitates with her hand on the front door. “I should go.”

He holds the door open for her and stands on the front step. “Shepard… I know you won’t stop going into the mines,” and if he had any doubt about that, the way she grimaces at him would erase it, “but, will you at least be careful?”

He almost forgets the mental image of her descending into the mines with only a sword to protect herself when she smiles at him.

“You don’t have to worry about me, Kaidan. I’m always careful.”

\---

Hazel regrets the reassurance even as she says it, because it’s a promise she’s not sure she can keep. She wasn’t _lying,_ not really.

She is, she _is_ careful, but she can’t help everything, and it’s not really her fault that the cave fly managed to sink its stinger deep into her arm. She knew it was a bad cut, deep and painful, but she thought if she kept it wrapped tight enough, well…

She thought maybe she wouldn’t disappoint Kaidan again.

Sometimes she just has bad luck.

She takes more pickles by the clinic, because Kaidan loves them, and he always looks so painfully surprised when she gives him a gift, like he’s not used to someone caring or paying attention to him or something, and she can’t help but wonder why that is. Who has he been friends with before she came to town? What kind of people has he dated? Why is he so _surprised_ that she pays attention to him?

She hits pay dirt in the mines, more literally than she ever thought she would, finding several clusters of unreasonably large amethysts that she drags into town for Cortez to take care of for her. He doesn’t even look surprised this time, just whistles long and low at the sight and promises to bring her the profits when he gets them taken care of.

She can probably pay for a barn with that gold.

And then she can get a goat.


	3. Summer, Year 1

**Early Summer, Year 1**

The first days of the new season feel almost exactly like her first days in the Valley. She has to tear out old plants, till the soil, buy seeds and fertilizer from Joker, plant and water and keep Cinnamon from digging up the soft soil.

Some things are the same, but other things are different too; she doesn’t get tired nearly as easily, her body now stronger, more used to the physical labor. She has friends she can see if she drags herself into town on a Friday night, and she has a steady source of income since her hens have finally started laying.

The first day she can get away is also the day of the first summer storm; she pulls the hood of her raincoat down low and makes the trek up to Tali’s place to see about getting a barn built, and she ends up staying for coffee and leaves with plans for a barn and a silo for feed and a tentative house upgrade by the end of the year.

It would be nice to have a full-sized kitchen and a bedroom with a door on it. The studio-apartment-feel belongs in Zuzu City, not out in the country where she has forty acres to her name.

She heads south toward the town, intending to pop into the clinic to say hi to Ashley (and, by extension, Kaidan), maybe head over to the library to see if there’s anything interesting tucked away amid the paperbacks. But then she sees the Community Center. She doesn’t know why, but she finds herself walking closer.

She’s probably walked by it a couple dozen times since she moved into the farmhouse, but she hasn’t looked at it any closer than that. She thought Anderson said something about the lock being broken, so maybe…

The door opens when she pushes on it, swinging without resistance, and she leaves it open as she steps inside. 

It looks… almost the same as she remembered, but like no one’s stepped foot inside it in twenty years. The floor is broken and buckling, weeds springing up wherever they could get a foothold; the old aquarium broken with mold on the wall behind it; the windows clouded with dust.

And across the way, a shadow moves too fast for her to make it out.

It’s bigger than a rat but smaller than a slime, so she moves closer even though she promised Kaidan she’d be more careful and she doesn’t even have her dagger on her. 

She’ll be okay.

The door’s still open. She can run.

In the back corner of the room is what looks like a mound of roots and leaves, but when she kneels down and peers into a dark opening, she realizes it’s more like a hut, or an animal den, even though she can’t see anything inside of it. Maybe that was the shadow she saw.

She hears skittering from deeper in the building, and she follows it into what she remembers being the playroom. She used to spend hours here when her grandfather had to work, but now there are cobwebs high up in the corners and…

A Junimo.

She’s never seen one in person before, but she’s seen the little sketch in Gramps’ journal. The little apple-shaped creature chitters at her, then waves its arms, then bounces deeper into the room. She takes a careful step forward, then another one, and then a third when the Junimo keeps chittering but doesn’t move away.

When she gets close enough, it just… stops being there, fading away from her sight like she imagined it the whole time, and she nearly turns right back around to go home for a nap to clear her head, but she spots what the little creature was trying to show her before she has the chance to move.

There’s a golden plaque on the floor -- no, it’s  _ in  _ the floor, and it won’t move when she tugs at it. There are symbols carved in it, but she can’t read them, and the Junimo is gone.

If she wasn’t touching the plaque with her bare hand, she wouldn’t even believe her eyes, but she can feel the cool of the metal against her fingers and it makes a hollow clanging noise when she knocks against it with her knuckles. The regular floor just echoes.

There’s almost  _ definitely _ another Junimo watching her as she turns to leave, fully intending now to go straight to the saloon to find out what Wrex’s strongest drink is, but it disappears as soon as she looks directly at it.

Huh.

Who would’ve thought?

\---

Hazel wakes up with the worst hangover she’s had since moving to Pelican Town, but that’s honestly not saying all that much. She’s dehydrated and a headache pounds behind her eyes, but she feels better after drinking several glasses of water and, honestly, taking a nap after the plants are watered and the chickens are taken care of is the best idea she’s ever had.

Apparently, fighting slimes is one thing, but coming face-to-face with a forest spirit? It’s too much, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. It feels like a dream, but she  _ knows  _ it really happened.

She finally wanders out to check her mail in the mid-afternoon, flipping through the mailers and dumping the one from JojaMart right in the garbage. There’s another ad from the General Store, something about new seed varieties she doesn’t have room for yet, and then a letter from an address she doesn’t recognize.

It’s not a bill, so she opens it right away to see what’s up. Sometimes people from town will send her letters or a small package if she hasn’t made it to the saloon in a few days, random notes, recipes, sometimes supplies they claim to have had lying around, sometimes just requests for her to grow things.

This is different.

_ Farmer Shepard, I have some information for you about the Junimos. Please come to my tower at your earliest convenience. Liara T’Soni.  _

She hasn’t even met Liara yet, but she’s heard about the woman who lives in the tower on the west side of the Cindersap. 

Curiosity burns in her chest, bright and insistent, stronger even that whatever pulled her into the mines that first day.

Well. Her chores are done, and she’s taken a nap. 

Her earliest convenience is… right now.

She grabs a granola bar to eat as she walks, cutting across her property to the south entrance, the one right by Kahlee’s and closest to the forest itself. Cinnamon follows her for a while before she gets bored and bounds back toward the farmhouse, probably to bark at the chickens, and then she’s off her property and staring at the tower rising above the trees.

It was weird the first time she saw it, when she came down to introduce herself to Kahlee and Scott and Samara in the little cabin, but now that she’s come face-to-face with slime monsters and forest spirits… having a random tower with a mysterious inhabitant is probably the least-weird thing about this whole valley.

No one answers when she knocks on the door, but the handle turns when she tests it. Since everyone else in Pelican Town leaves their doors open and welcomes surprise visitors at basically all hours, she just… opens the door and walks inside like she owns the place.

“Hello?”

Her voice echoes as she calls out, but there’s an echoing bang from deeper in the tower and after a moment, a woman pops around the corner, holding a huge book in her hands. Her eyes are unfocused, her gaze dancing over Hazel before they finally settle on her face.

“Oh! You’re the farmer!” Liara steps forward, making an awkward motion with the book in her hands, then she shakes herself and moves to put the book down instead. Hands free, she turns back and shakes Hazel’s hand with a bright smile. “I’m sorry I haven’t been down to meet you. Time just keeps slipping away from me.” 

“Oh, it’s okay.” Hazel laughs and extracts her hand from Liara, safely tucking them both in her pockets. “I’ve been busy setting everything up on the farm, anyway.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Liara hovers for a second before gesturing for Hazel to sit. “You’ve  _ also  _ been busy in the Community Center.” 

“Uh, yeah, how did you…” Hazel sits where she’s told and Liara settles across from her, excitement painted across her freckled face and waving away Hazel’s question.

“You’re going to help them.”

It’s not a question, so Hazel doesn’t nod, doesn’t say yes or no, just says the first thing that comes to her mind: “I don’t know how.”

Liara nods with an earnestness Hazel isn’t expecting, resting her hands on the table between them. “I can help you! Once you have the spirit of the forest within you, you’ll be able to understand their language and provide them with what they need--”

“Um--”

“And you can help restore the magic to the Valley!”

“How does that--”

“Let me help you help them. Give me your hand.” Liara reaches across the and turns one hand palm-up, wiggling her fingers at Hazel in encouragement.

“Why can’t  _ you  _ help them?” 

Though her words are defiant, she puts her hand in Liara’s. Liara puts her other hand on top and holds Hazel still. 

“You’re the one that’s been chosen. Hold still.” She closes her eyes and a soft blue glow starts to emanate from her skin, and she tightens her grip on Hazel’s hand like she knows Hazel’s about to pull away. “Stop fighting me, please. I’m going to teach you how to commune with the forest spirits.”

Hazel obeys, relaxing her hand and giving herself over to the tingling in her fingers. It flows up her arm and into her chest the second she relaxes, like her whole body is falling asleep, and then the blue overtakes her completely.

She knows she’s still sitting down, because she hasn’t  _ moved,  _ but she can’t feel the chair underneath her, or the table leg against her knee, or her feet on the floor. She can’t feel anything except Liara’s hands on hers and that warm blue glow on her skin.

She can’t focus on anything like this, not with the way Liara’s magic is flowing over her. She wants to ask what’s going on, how this is working, but memories start to float behind her eyelids and suddenly little things about life in Pelican Town start to make sense.

How fast her first crop of parsnips were ready, compared to the rest.

How her grandfather managed the whole farm by himself for so long.

How he lived in a place with no real kitchen.

Why the mines are full of creatures she’s never even heard of before, not even in documentaries or on the news.

Why the little creatures in the Community Center need her help.

Why JojaMart needs to be closed down and driven out of town for the Junimos to thrive, despite the JojaCorp slogan.

_ Join us. Thrive. _

When she opens her eyes again, Liara’s still staring at her, but there’s a wide smile on her face and she looks like she’s just found the answer to a problem she’s been puzzling over for years.

Did she somehow see what Hazel saw?

Hazel pulls her hands away and folds them in her lap, foot tapping a steady rhythm against the floor.

“How do you feel?” Liara tucks her hands under her chin and falls silent, waiting.

Hazel opens her mouth to say that she’s feeling fine, thanks, like she always says even when her back is aching or an injury from the mines is still healing, but… this feels like a deeper question than that, so she closes her eyes and tries to really focus on how she feels.

Ever since she started working on the farm, she’s held aches and pains. Sore muscles, blisters, dry skin, sunburn, cuts and scrapes and monster bites. She’s held exhaustion and excitement and general confusion about what to do next. She’s held hope that everything will work out.

She doesn’t feel any of those things right now, except for the hope and general confusion, but on top of that… She can feel the forest outside, the growing plant in the corner, the ground underneath her, the Valley around her.

She opens her eyes again and looks into Liara’s too-blue eyes.

“Alive.”

Liara claps her hands together like she understands everything Hazel means, and leaps up to throw the front door open. Sunlight streams in, lighting the whole room, and even the birds sound louder now.

“You have everything you need to bring Life back to the Valley. Don’t let us down, Shepard.”

\---

Hazel’s still not really sure why she’s the  _ only  _ one in the Valley the Junimos trust, but she heads straight to the Community Center after Liara pushes her out the door. 

The old building is just how she left it, with the little Junimo house in the corner and the Junimos themselves bouncing just out of her line of sight. She takes careful steps on the rotting floor and moves to the old playroom, intent on looking at the golden plaque to see if she can actually understand it now.

There’s a little green Junimo standing next to the plaque. It squeaks as soon as Hazel walks into the room, jumps once, and then fades out of her sight.

Well, okay.

She kneels down in the dust next to the plaque and runs her fingers over its cool surface. When she was here yesterday, the words on the plaque had been gibberish, but now she can see… it’s a list of foraged goods the Valley is known for. It’s too late in the year for leeks or dandelions, but she definitely passed some sweet peas on the way in.

Huh.

Maybe she can take care of these Junimos after all.

\---

When Hazel started thinking about moving to Pelican Town to take over the old farm, she never pictured all the extra things she'd need to learn to do. She expected to have to learn how to manage farm equipment, but she never expected to learn how to fight with a sword, how to carry chunks of rock and uncut gems up and down ladders, how to duck when a fucking  _ bat  _ flies right at her head in the darkness so far underground.

When the bat comes back around, she’s ready for it. She whips her sword up just in time to catch the bat’s wing on its sharp edge. The wing falls straight down and lands at her feet; the body of the bat sails past her and bounces into the wall.

She scoops up the dismembered wing and stops long enough to free the second one with her dagger before moving on, tucking them into her bag.

She doesn’t know what the Junimos are going to do with a handful of bat wings, but she wouldn’t ask if she could. She doesn’t want to know.

This is the deepest she’s been in the mines since she started coming down here, and it’s hard to forget about the hundreds of feet of earth above her head. If she goes a little deeper, she thinks, she’ll be able to take the elevator back up for the day, maybe head to the saloon for dinner, maybe catch Kaidan after work, maybe buy him a drink…

But first, maybe, just one more floor.

\---

Kaidan literally has his fingers on the clinic’s deadbolt when the phone rings.

The sound is jarring in the silence, and he flinches away before catching himself. He answers it on the second ring, leaning over the counter to grab the receiver.

“Pelican Town Clinic,” he says, like anyone calling this number wouldn’t know where they were calling, and then he glances at the clock on the wall before continuing: “is it an emergency?”

Tali’s voice comes over the line tinny and high-pitched, her words a dagger of fear through his ribs. 

“Kaidan? Kaidan! You need to get up here as soon as you can. Shepard’s hurt.”

Those fucking mines.

“What happened?” 

“I don’t know -- Jack said to call you, that Shepard was unconscious and she couldn’t get to her. Zaeed is going to help, but we need you too.” 

The fear sharpens into dizzying panic, then settles into something cold and hard inside him, a steely determination to help the best he can.

She’s still down there.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Tali.”

Kaidan hangs up before he’s fully registered her goodbye, and then he’s slamming through the clinic doors hard enough that one of the framed posters falls off the wall with a clatter. He grabs his emergency bag and heads back out, leaving the poster where it is.

He can deal with that later.

The walk up to Tali and Garrus’ place is long, mostly uphill, and his legs start to burn as sweat gathers on his skin. It’s not a trek he usually make, except in extreme circumstances: even when Ashley invites him up to hang out in the space she rents from the Vakarians, he tells her to come into town instead.

This  _ definitely _ qualifies as an extreme circumstance.

He makes the half-hour walk in fifteen, sweating and gasping for breath, but he doesn’t even slow down as Tali leaps off her front porch and joins him at a jog as they finish walking up the path to the mines.

“How long has she been down there? Do you know?”

Tali shakes her head and moves a little faster to get ahead of him, leading him up past the lake and over a narrow footbridge he finds much too rickety for his taste, like it’s just the cheapest thing JojaCorp could get away with putting here after they ruined the old bridge with their rockslide. 

“Sometimes I see her walk by after lunch and don’t see her come back out, but she’s always been okay before!” Tali’s wringing her hands, her anxiety making Kaidan’s ratchet tighter. “She’s never just… not come out. We’re lucky Jack realized something was wrong.”

Kaidan’s never spoken directly to Jack before. The woman lives outside town and comes to some of the events to spike the punch, but she never comes in for appointments or even first aid. He recognizes her because she has tattoos on every inch of exposed skin, including on her skull, and he doesn’t even want to think about how much that hurt.

Jack doesn’t smile at him, just narrows her eyes as the cherry on the end of her cigarette turns bright red. Zaeed is at her side, sword already in his hand, a mining helmet with a light strapped to it on his head.

“‘Bout time,” he mutters. “Here.” 

Kaidan nearly drops his emergency kit as Zaeed tosses another helmet at him. He catches it, barely, and secures it on his head before accepting the dagger Zaeed offers him next. He glances over at Tali, who’s still wringing her fingers together, and then back at the adventurers before him.

He’s not one of them, and he shouldn’t be going down into the mines at all.

Shepard needs him, though, so he  _ has _ to go. He’ll bring her to safety.

Jack drops her cigarette and grinds it out with her boot. “Let’s go, boy scout.”

He wants to object, because he wasn’t a boy scout, and maybe if he was, he’d be less nervous about what’s about to happen, but he  _ doesn’t  _ object because there isn’t time. Shepard could be bleeding out  _ right now _ \-- could already be dead, for all he knows.

He follows them into the narrow, rickety little elevator and tucks himself into the corner. He smiles at Tali as the doors close, and doesn’t speak as the elevator descends lower, and lower, and lower.

Holy shit.

How much time has Shepard been spending down here? If she’s okay… No,  _ when  _ she recovers, he’s going to buy her a drink and  _ really _ pick her brain about what keeps bringing her down here when she’s getting so hurt. He’s absolutely certain that she’s gotten hurt more times than he’s seen. There’s no way she’s gotten this far down without getting hurt more than three times.

The elevator stops without warning, throwing all three of them off balance. The light above their head flickers and then goes out completely as the doors open, and all three of them click on their headlamps. 

It’s time to find Shepard.

Jack leads the way, Zaeed behind her, and Kaidan follows with his heart in his throat and his knuckles turning white around the dagger and the medical bag. This floor of the mine is so dark, he can’t see anything beyond the illumination from their headlamps, but he can  _ hear  _ things going on around him.

The steady dripping of water.

The scuffle of their feet on stone.

The squeaking of bats.

The wet squelch of…

_ Something _ .

He’s never heard that particular sound before.

He never wants to hear it again. 

“There she is!” Jack’s voice startles him out of his thoughts and his body kicks into gear, pushing him forward, past his companions ,until he finds Shepard slumped over a boulder.

Her eyes are closed, her mouth open, blood on her cheek and on her chin, completely covering her front, and Kaidan drops the dagger in favor of searching for a pulse on the underside of her chin.

It’s there.

It’s weak, but it’s there.

Dimly, he registers Jack calling out for Zaeed, something about a Shadow Brute, and then he can hear the sounds of yelling and fighting and none of that matters in the face of what’s wrong with Shepard.

She’s unconscious, still bleeding, and when he stretches her out on her back he can see the primary cause is two sets of claw marks across her torso. It’s like a beast slapped her, twice, raking three-fingered hands across her, ruining her shirt and breaking open her skin so terribly that at first glance he can’t tell where her wounds start and where her shirt ends.

He snaps nitrile gloves on and cuts her shirt away, moving on autopilot as his training takes over to stem the bleeding with bandages, to protect the open wounds from their dirty surroundings. It’s a balancing act, getting her stable enough to move without wasting too much time away from the more advanced care he can give her at the clinic.

Zaeed cheers when the monster they’re fighting falls and Kaidan ignores that too, zipping his bag back up and leaning over Shepard to check her pulse just one more time before he makes the decision to go back into town. 

This time, she shifts at his touch, eyes blinking open. They’re unfocused, hazy, but they finally meet his after a search that steals his breath.

She smiles at him, actually smiles at him despite everything, and she draws in a breath like she might say something. Her lips part at the same time her face crumples, and then she’s unconscious again.

“She gonna make it?” 

Zaeed’s rough voice cuts through the silence that follows, his boots appearing next to Jack’s at the corner of Kaidan’s vision.

“If we can get her back. Get my bag.”

Kaidan’s running on pure adrenaline as he heaves Hazel up and over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He just wants to make sure she’ll be okay.

He’ll carry her all the way back to the clinic if he has to.

\---

Hazel becomes aware of her surroundings in stages. The first thing she realizes is that she’s in more pain than she’s ever been in before. The second thing she realizes is that she’s still alive, and she wasn’t expecting to be. She’s never spent much time thinking about the afterlife, but she’s pretty sure pain isn’t supposed to be a part of it.

The curtains are drawn, but enough light is coming through them that she knows it’s morning again, even though it had been late afternoon the last time she looked at her watch, down in the mines. Something happened that made her lose  _ hours,  _ and that’s never happened before, not even the other times she was hurt.

Oh.

The shadow.

She doesn’t move because it hurts too much, just lays still and looks up at the ceiling of the clinic, counting her breaths and waiting for Kaidan to come in and yell at her.

He must be furious. He was upset she had that cut at the Flower Dance, and he looked so sad and serious when he asked her to be careful. And she had been, mostly. It was just…

It was just bad luck. Maybe a dash of her own stupidity. Just a bit.

A door nearby opens and clicks closed. Muffled footsteps get louder, then the privacy curtain is pulled back.

She’s expecting Kaidan, but it’s Ashley standing there in her scrubs, exhaustion burned into her features and a frown twisting her face.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

Ashley chuckles a little and moves closer, checking the readouts on the machines behind Hazel, then the IV bag, then she pulls up the little stool and sits down.

“You scared the hell out of everyone.”

Hazel closes her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Like. Seriously. Kaidan went down into the mines with Zaeed  _ and  _ Jack to get you, and he carried you all the way out.” Ashley pauses like she wants the image to sink home, and it does, bringing an intense sense of shame along with it. “He does  _ not  _ do that kind of thing, Shepard.”

Silence stretches between them. Hazel tries to make herself apologize to Ashley, to apologize for scaring everyone, but she can’t quite find the words because she thinks she’ll cry if she does.

“Are you in pain?”

“Yeah.”

“I can give you some Toradol, but you should go back to sleep after. Get some rest.”

Hazel finally opens her eyes again so she can see Ashley moving around the room, pulling gloves on before she doses out liquid into a syringe to inject it into her IV. The relief isn’t instant or anything, but Hazel relaxes a little anyway in anticipation. Then she tenses up again. 

“I have to go home.”

“What? No.”

“I have to check on the girls and the plants, and…” And she wants to be alone to lick her wounds in peace. “Can I check myself out? Where’s Kaidan?”

Ashley holds her hands out like she’s going to physically hold Hazel back, but Hazel just keeps sitting up, trying to stand, and Ashley backs off.

“He went home.” Ashley’s voice is short, annoyed. “He has a migraine. Give me a few minutes to let the medication finish and I’ll get your discharge paperwork.”

Hazel shrinks back onto the bed and closes her eyes again. Her ribs ache. She’s certain she’s covered in stitches, bruises, and should absolutely not be returning to work on her farm. She’s going to hurt herself more and then Kaidan will be even more angry at her than he probably already is if she almost died and stressed him out so bad he got a fucking migraine.

Ashley’s gone for long enough that Hazel starts to think maybe she’s been forgotten, but then she comes back and looks so disappointed to see Hazel’s eyes still open that Hazel would laugh if she wasn’t certain her ribs would hurt too much.

“I pulled together some information about keeping your wounds clean, what to look out for when it comes to infection, how to change the bandages, stuff like that. I really think you should stay here -- isn’t there anyone else who can check on your farm?”

Kahlee probably would if she called to ask, but she’s never actually been to visit the chickens. They don’t know her, Cinnamon doesn’t know her. Anyone can look to see if the sprinklers have kicked on, but what if they haven’t? Who’s going to fix them back up?

“I can do it,” Hazel insists, taking the papers from Ashley and forcing herself up. She tugs on the scrubs shirt she’s wearing, pulling it down even though moving her arms hurts too. The old tee she wore into the mines must have been completely ruined, because it’s not even in the big garbage bag of her stuff that Ashley produces from the cabinet in the corner. “It’s not a big deal, and I’ll go right to bed when I’m done.”

“Okay. Well. Call the clinic if you need help. I can be there in just a few minutes.”

Hazel shoves her feet into her boots and ignores Ashley’s hovering. “Don’t have a phone.” There’s a long, long pause. Hazel stands up and locks her knees so she doesn’t fall right back down and stares into Ashley’s horrified face. She sighs. “You can come check on me if you want to. When you’re done here.”

Ashley relaxes a bit. She must have been worried. 

“I will. See you then.”

Hazel clutches the bag of her things to her chest and slinks out of the clinic, walking home with her head down as she starts to sweat in the sun. 

Everything is fine on the farm. The girls are upset their breakfast was late, clucking indignantly at her when she pops into the coop to spread out the feed. Cinnamon seems to know something’s up, because she whines and sticks to Hazel’s side like glue as she forces herself through her chores.

The beans on her coffee plants are almost ready for a harvest. She’s had big plans to wrap them up and sell them out of Joker’s, but at least… seventy-five percent should go to Kaidan for what he did for her.

She can’t  _ believe _ he went into the mines for her, not when he hates them so much. He risked his  _ life  _ to save hers. She can’t believe it.

Hazel goes through her things in the relative coolness of her house. Her backpack is ripped up, nothing she can’t mend, but some of her gems have fallen out and her grandfather’s old sword is missing. She probably dropped it in the fight and no one grabbed it during their escape.

Shit. Maybe she can talk Zaeed into going and getting it for her. Or she can buy a nicer sword and go get it herself…

No. She has to heal up and she should probably stop going so deep in the mines anyway. She can get everything she needs on the upper-most floors, and she has just about enough bat wings to keep the Junimos happy now, so that’s barely an issue.

She reads through Ashley’s directions and then goes straight to the bathroom. Cinnamon lays on the floor and stares at her as she takes the bandages off to see the damage the monster did to her…

It’s bad.

It’s bad enough that she clears her throat to fight the way she wants to gag at the sight of so many sutures holding her body together, and looks away as she rebandages herself. She can’t get the stitches wet, so she can’t take a shower until tonight, so she puts her towels on top of her bed and stretches out on them, one arm over her eyes to block out the light.

She’s alive. 

It’s okay.

She’ll be okay.

**Mid-Summer, Year 1**

It’s almost unbearably hot by the ocean, the heat only growing worse as the sun reflects off the sand and the water. She almost didn’t come today, but she hasn’t left her farm in a week and a half and the idea of sitting alone at home feeling her scabs heal makes her want to run right back to Zuzu City and get a job where her worst injury was a paper cut, or maybe the twisted ankle she got after the last New Year’s party.

The peppers she’s been growing are bright and red, hot and delicious, and she brings a little container of them with her to the Luau. Anderson explained that it’s like a big community stew, with everyone adding their own ingredients, and she wants so badly to fit in that she doesn’t want to risk offending anyone by not participating.

She’s not going to  _ eat _ it, though. They can’t make her.

Sweat is pouring down her back by the time she’s done putting her peppers in the stew, and it’s making her stitches itch. She’s going to have to clean and rebandage again when she gets home, which means she’s going to have to buy more bandages. Joker’s at the Luau, so his shop is closed, but she’s pretty sure he’ll open up for her if her only other option is going across to the JojaMart.

Ashley’s standing with Avery and Sam, so Hazel heads over there with her hands in the pockets of her shorts and tries to pretend like she hasn’t already sweated through her loose shirt.

The three women fall silent when Hazel gets close enough, and she ignores the absolute certainty that they were talking about her and keeps going until she’s right up next to them, heels sinking a bit in the loose sand.

“Hey, guys.” If she has to be the one to break the silence, she will. She offers them a winning smile and waits as their eyes flick over her, assessing.

Sam speaks first. “Shepard! You’re alive! How are you feeling?”

Itchy, hot, embarrassed, exhausted. “Oh, I’m fine! Just about good as new. The melons I planted should be perfectly ripe in a day or two; want me to bring one into town for you?”

Sam’s face lights up just like she thought it would. “Oh, that would be perfect!” She’s still cute, and the way she’s smiling makes her look beautiful, her accent making Hazel smile back, but all she really wants to do is find Kaidan.

Ashley’s examining her with a critical eye, like she knows something’s up but isn’t quite sure what that thing is. “How are those stitches?”

Hazel shrugs and resists the urge to wrap her arms around her waist. She’s been doing it a lot lately, like she can hold herself together like that until she’s completely healed. She has a feeling Ashley will pounce if she sees weakness.

“Nothing to write home about.” Ashley’s eyes narrow at her, so she adds, “I’m not that easy to kill.”

She meant it as a joke, really, but it falls flat and she feels her cheeks heating up. 

Great.

Anderson’s voice interrupts anything else they might say, declaring the soup ready to eat. Just the idea of putting any of it in her mouth is enough to make her feel vaguely nauseated, so she moves in with the crowd but stays toward the back so no one can make her. The governor is here for the taste test, Udina something, or something Udina, someone she didn’t vote for, and she takes the opportunity to look around for Kaidan.

He’s off to the side too, a drink in his hand, and he does a double take at her when he sees her winding through the crowd toward him.

“There you are,” she says, and smiles when his cheeks heat a bit, smiles wider when he looks down at her bare thighs and then into his drink. “Haven’t seen you in a bit.”

Kaidan doesn’t quite look back at her, focusing instead on the governor, but he’s tilted toward her in a way that makes her think he’s still paying attention to her. “Been busy farming?”

“Mostly just sitting around and reading, lately.” The corner of his mouth twitches into a little smile that goes as quickly as it came. “I wanted to thank you. Ashley said what you did for me, and, uh…”

Something’s wrong. Kaidan’s body language changes as she tries to thank him: his shoulders tense, he turns away from her, his fingers flex around his cup and then relax when the paper starts to crumple.

“Uh…”

“You don’t have to thank me, Shepard.” He’s still not quite looking at her. “It’s my job to keep you healthy.”

It feels like a dismissal. It feels like she’s being shut out. Distantly, she hears Udina saying he doesn’t have all that much to say about the soup, which seems sort of rude, but she can’t really focus on that over the discomfort she’s feeling that’s suddenly centered around Kaidan’s prickly response instead of on her stitches.

“Still. Coming into the mines… just, thank you.”

He presses his lips together and looks down, silent, and Hazel can’t take it anymore. “See you.”

She leaves him standing in the sand and weaves through the crowd without saying goodbye to anyone else, ignoring the weight of Ashley’s eyes on her back.

\---

Hazel doesn’t want to go to her checkup. She wakes up early and dreads it, does her chores and dreads it, plays with the new goats and dreads it.

She dreads it as she takes a shower and as she changes into three outfits before finally deciding on just a clean pair of jeans and a loose shirt that won’t aggravate her stitches. It has a faded Tunnellers’ logo on the front of it, barely recognizable, and she fiddles with the hem as she walks into town.

What if Kaidan’s still mad at her?

Ashley greets her when she walks in the clinic’s door, hands her paperwork and tells her to sit down as she fills it out, that Kaidan will be out soon.

She valiantly avoids chewing on the pen cap and pulls her lower lip into her mouth instead, giving in, however briefly, to the anxiety that’s been swirling through her all morning. She’s being ridiculous. It’s just a check-up, and Kaidan’s a friend. Isn’t he?

Kaidan looks a little softer when he opens the door to call her back, more relaxed, a professional little smile on his face that melts into a laugh when she opens her mouth to greet him but instead finds herself blurting, “Mustache?”

“Yeah, I, uh,” he wipes his hand over his lower jaw, cheeks darkening just a bit. “I lost a bet. Come on back to my office.”

She stands up and floats along behind him, the clipboard Ashley gave her tucked against her chest, not quite sure if she likes the mustache or not. “Huh.”

He flips through her paperwork once she’s sitting on the exam table in his office, but she knows there’s nothing particularly interesting in there. No allergies (except to the slimes, and just the green ones for some reason, and she hadn’t written that down anyway), no medications, no major surgeries, no family history of anything particularly worrying, just a father who died too young in a war and a mother who died twenty years later but still too young in an accident.

“How are your stitches healing?” He’s pulling nitrile gloves on again, and she wishes for the rolled-up sleeves from the Flower Dance. “Any problems?”

“They’re fine,” Hazel says. Kaidan arches one dark eyebrow at her, so she amends, “Itchy, but they don’t hurt. I’ve been following the directions Ashley gave me.”

He asks her to lean back so she does, letting him move her shirt out of the way so he can look at the six individual places where she’s been stitched back together. He presses gently at the edges, then says some of them can come out now, which will help with some of the itching. She lets him, staring resolutely up at the ceiling while he expertly cuts and pulls out the stitches that have already done their job, only flinching when his fingers brush against her ribs instead of at the icky feeling of the pulled stitches.

He doesn’t say anything, and the silence feels so fraught with something she can’t name that she’s sure he’ll be able to hear her heart hammering away in her chest. He’s a doctor, right, shouldn’t he be attuned to that sort of thing?

With the stitches done, he lets her sit up and takes her temperature, says she can skip the blood work this time since they took some from her last time she was in even if she doesn’t remember it, and then he takes her blood pressure.

His forehead furrows as he listens to his stethoscope, then he presses his first two fingers against the inside of her wrist.

“Your pulse is a little high,” he says, glancing up and meeting her eyes again.

It’s not quite a question, but she feels compelled to answer it anyway.

“I’m a little nervous.” 

It’s not quite a lie. She  _ is  _ a little nervous, but mostly because he’s standing so close she can smell his aftershave and can’t really help but wonder what his mustache might feel like against her skin. Her pulse jumps again and Kaidan squeezes her wrist before he lets her go, backing up to give her more space.

“Hospitals make a lot of people nervous.” He’s not quite looking at her again as he speaks, but he meets her eyes again when he sits down in his office chair. “Well, other than the stitches and the nerves, you’re in perfect health, Shepard. Do you have any concerns?”

Concerns? About her health? No, not really.

“Are we okay?”

The professional smile slips a little as she stares at his face. He knows what she’s talking about, and she twists the hem of her shirt between her fingers as she waits for him to talk. 

Kaidan sighs before he speaks. 

“If I hadn’t gotten there when I did, you would have died. If Jack hadn’t found you and called me, you wouldn’t have made it. It was  _ that  _ close.”

Her face burns, shame churning inside her chest. She feels sick with it.

“You said you were going to be more careful after the last time. And the time before that.” Kaidan sighs and she peers up at him through her lashes. “Never do that again.” He blinks, eyes widening a bit, maybe at the harshness of his own words, and corrects himself. “Ah. Please.”

“I’ll never do that again.” It’s an easy promise to make when he’s sitting in front of her like that, even with the ridiculous mustache, but it’s also probably a lie. The quirk of his mustache lets her know he knows it too. Hazel bites her lip, tries to explain herself. “I didn’t — it was just bad luck, I’d never do that on _ purpose.” _

He stares at her for several seconds without speaking, just studying her like he’s trying to figure out whether to believe her or not. Finally, he must decide she’s past his inspection, because he nods and stands and puts out his hand to help her up too. She lets him even though she doesn’t need him to, just because she wants to feel the warmth of his fingers instead of the sterility of the gloves, and then their eyes meet again and she’s pulling her hand free to hide her fingers in her pockets, unable to keep looking at him with so much heat in her cheeks.

Kaidan walks her back to the waiting room where Ashley interrupts their silence with an absolute shit-eating grin on her face. 

“Same time next year, Shepard?”

Hazel jumps, startled, then lets out a short laugh at herself. 

“Yeah, sure. Might as well.”

They all wait quietly as Ashley scribbles out Hazel’s appointment reminder card, and then Hazel finally turns to look at Kaidan again. And his mustache.

“What bet did you lose, anyway?”

Ashley snorts and begins to laugh at the question, a throaty sound that echoes through the room. Kaidan flushes, hurriedly pushing Hazel through the door. He stands on the stoop and lets the door close behind him.

“The bet doesn’t really matter,” he says. His hand is still on the doorknob, and she’s a couple paces away in the square, squinting up at him in the afternoon light. “But, ah, despite the punishment, I’m happy I agreed to it.”

\---

Okay, so,  _ maybe _ Hazel lied about being more careful. Being more careful would involve  _ not _ going into the mines, ever, but she has  _ things  _ she needs down there. Ore, monster parts, the spike of adrenaline she’s never, ever felt doing anything else before in her life, but which makes her feel so incredibly  _ alive _ .

She just has to make sure she isn’t caught, and that means she has to make sure she isn’t hurt again, not like before.

She got her old sword back and talks to Tali about finding a way to display it in the house, and then she buys a nicer one from Zaeed. It helps more than she’d like to admit, slicing through monsters with less effort than the old one, and it’s easier to keep the monsters at bay when it’s easier to stab them.

The Junimos are happy with her, at least. She brings them the things they need as often as she can, as sneakily as she can, because she doesn’t want to have to explain to anyone why she’s sneaking red cabbages and baggies full of bat wings into an abandoned building. And they’re doing a good job restoring the Community Center. Liara was right — they did choose Hazel, and she’ll do everything she can to make sure they get what they need… even if it means going deeper into the mines than ever before.

\---

The logo Hazel’s friend made for her looks good stamped on the windowed brown baggies full of roasted coffee beans. She’s proud of them — the first crop came in so much bigger than she was expecting, and she has the whole rest of the summer to keep harvesting. If she can get her greenhouse fixed up, she can have coffee beans ready for sale year-round…

She has two crates full, ready for Edi to come pick up for Joker, but she keeps five bags separate to take to Kaidan. Well, four for Kaidan and one for Ashley because it’s kind of rude to give presents to one person  _ just because  _ and not share with everyone else, even if the smug look on Ashley’s face every time she stops by with farm-fresh freebies says she knows what’s up.

She shouldn’t have worried, though. Ashley’s not even there when she pushes through the front door, even though it’s a Thursday and she should be behind the counter in her scrubs, and Kaidan comes through the back doors with a serious expression on his face that melts into a smile when he sees her.

“I have thank-you gifts,” she tells him, floating closer and holding out the bags.

“‘Thank you’ for what?” Kaidan looks genuinely confused, but he takes the coffee anyway. He puts the bags on the counter and opens one, breathing deeply with his nose hidden behind the brown paper. His eyebrows lift and he groans a little, quiet, like it’s involuntary, and she licks her lips at the sound.

She snaps her jaw shut when he looks at her expectantly, eyes bright.

“Uh.” What was the question? Oh, right… “You know. Saving my life, again. Going into the mines even though you hate them. Being a good friend.” She waves her hand and hopes he doesn’t notice her blushing, doesn’t ask her if she has a fever like he did when she was ogling his hands after the Flower Dance, which had been embarrassing enough to make her blush deeper even now. “Just, uh. Thanks.”

Kaidan blinks at her twice before his smile grows into something bright and beautiful, and he ducks his head like  _ he’s  _ the one who’s embarrassed.

“Can I even thank you for a thank-you gift?”

“Don’t see why not.” Hazel wants to wrap her arms around herself to hold herself together, but she doesn’t want him to think she’s nervous, so she doesn’t.

“Well, then,” he says, still smiling that too-bright smile at her, “thank you. This is perfect.”

“I hope you like it,” she says, nerves and pride warring in her chest. “There’s, like, a hundred more bags where that came from.”

He carefully folds the top of the bag closed again and chuckles. 

“How much coffee do you think I drink?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you in here without a cup,” she says, with a teasing grin. “Do you have a caffeine problem? Maybe you should try drinking water.”

He scoffs at her, and she giggles. She  _ giggles,  _ which makes her blush more, but that makes him bite his lower lip so it’s okay. She should just ask him if he wants to get dinner at the Stardrop. That’s a normal thing people do here, right? Have dinner with friends?

He speaks before she can. “Are you going to be at the festival Saturday?”

“Um… the… jelly one?” 

She can’t remember what the calendar says, and she can’t think because it’s a sudden change of subject from the imaginary conversation she was having in her head. Kaidan’s smile becomes a little lopsided. 

“Dance of the Moonlight Jellies. Jellyfish come in near shore as part of their migration pattern. Everyone comes to watch. Everyone… including you?”

Is this a date? Is he inviting her to the festival  _ with  _ him, or just making conversation? Why can’t this just be simple and straightforward? She’s going to die before she figures it out.

“Including me! I wouldn’t miss it.” 

He doesn’t say anything back and the silence grows too thick. Did she do something wrong?

Her giggle is a little nervous as she tries to break the tension. “Will your mustache be joining us as well?”

It’s honestly become an impressive, horrible thing. He tilts his head back and laughs, and she stares at his throat. 

“I’ll be allowed to shave it before then.”

“Oh, good.” He laughs again, this one more of a chuckle. She gives into her impulse and twists the hem of her tank between her fingers. “Ashley’s a taskmaster, huh.”

He makes a face that clearly says  _ you have no idea,  _ and then Hazel’s saved from making more conversation by the bell jingling. It’s Avery, who stops and greets Hazel with a kiss on the cheek, eyes the bags of coffee with such an expression of longing that Hazel makes a note to bring her a bag too, and then Kaidan’s saying goodbye and scooping up all the bags to take into his office as Avery trails behind him for her appointment.

…time to ask someone for more details about the moonlight jellies.

**Late Summer, Year 1**

Hazel really should have figured out what she’d do with goat milk _before_ she bought goats from Kahlee. She doesn’t drink the stuff, and it takes _forever_ to turn into cheese by hand, and she’s always afraid it’s going to spoil before Edi can come pick it up for Joker.

Maybe Tali will know how to make a press? That’s something she can get help with, right?

As if anything on her plate could make her forget the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies, a flyer shows up in her mailbox the morning of to remind her to be at the beach by 10:00 p.m., even though the sun goes down earlier than that this time of year. She leaves the flyer on her kitchen table next to a couple bottles of blueberry wine she’s been saving for a special occasion. She’s gotten to know most of the residents reasonably well, and she’s pretty sure wine is always a welcome addition to the town festivals.

Hazel does her chores, plays with the animals, pulls weeds in the flower bed and the field with her crops, showers and cleans her remaining stitches, then takes a nap with the intention of being able to stay up as late as the festival lasts.

She’s nervous. She thinks about putting on makeup and changes her mind. She puts on an old sundress and then puts on her regular shorts and plain white v-neck. She puts on sneakers and then switches to sandals.

Cinnamon watches her with just a little too much judgment for Hazel’s taste, then goes to sleep when the show gets too boring.

Hazel’s out the door with the wine in her canvas shopping bag by 8:30, nerves shot through from thinking about this all day. Kaidan specifically asked if she would be there, but Ashley and Tali and Garrus and Sam and James had all asked her too, so she really shouldn’t be all this worked up about what’s not even  _ close  _ to being a date.

Despite functionally being more than an hour early, the beach is packed when she gets there. She has to stop and say hello to everyone on her way to finding Kaidan, and it’s well and truly dark by the time she finds him (mustache-free) alongside the usual crew of townies at the end of one of the docks.

“I come bearing gifts!” She pulls the wine bottles out of the bag and laughs when they’re both snatched from her hands without preamble. No one’s even upset by the lack of glassware, drinking directly from the bottle before passing it to the next person.

Ashley declines more after her first taste, claiming it’s too sweet for her, and Avery waves it away with a coy little smile and one hand on her stomach even as James tilts his head back and drinks her portion for her.

Kaidan stays next to Hazel as they drink and chat, close enough that she can feel the heat radiating off him but far enough away so that they’re not touching. She wants to lean across the space separating them and see if he’ll put his arm around her, if he’ll hold her the way James is wrapped almost completely around Avery or even the way Edi is holding onto Joker’s hand for dear life.

Instead, they’re standing in orbit, hovering just out of each other’s reach like Anderson and Kahlee, and her heart is in her throat.

She nearly jumps off the dock when Kaidan’s fingers brush against her forearm, just over the sensitive skin where he first stitched her up. He’s smirking at her, lips a little stained from the wine, and he leans in closer so she’ll be able to hear him over the crowd.

“Anderson’s about to release the boat.” 

Kaidan’s fingers brush over her arm again as he pulls his hand back to point at the next dock over, where Anderson is bent over to light a candle on a little wooden raft. Hazel leans closer still, turning to talk to him even though she’s supposed to be watching the mayor. 

“What’s it do?”

“The light draws the moonlight jellies close to shore.” His voice is a comforting rumble next to her, pitched just right to carry, and she pulls her lower lip between her teeth. “Watch.” 

Kaidan points again, this time out at the ocean, so Hazel forces her eyes from the curve of his lips to the darkness of the water where the only light is from the sky full of stars and the single floating candle, bobbing with the waves.

It’s like the whole town decides to start paying attention at once. A hush falls over them as soon as the first jellyfish comes into view, glowing a dull blue under the water. It’s buffeted by the tide, moving up and down, and grows closer as it’s joined by more and more of the little creatures.

Anderson slowly tows the boat in toward the shore, and the jellyfish follow.

“Oh, Kaidan…” She grabs for his arm and leans into him, but her eyes are glued on the spectacle in the ocean. There must be  _ hundreds _ of the little creatures migrating to warmer waters together, lighting up the bay like the sun is still in the sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

She glances up at him with wide eyes to see he’s already smiling back at her, the blue light of the jellies dancing over his face. He’s so handsome, his eyes so soft as he meets her gaze, and her breath catches in her throat.

She can’t do anything but not at him and turn back to the ocean, her fingers still wrapped around his arm.

By the time the jellyfish decide there’s nothing by the shore for them and move on, following the current to wherever it is they go for the winter, an autumn chill has settled in the air and the few children in the town are asleep in their parents’ arms.

The crowd thins out and Hazel takes a reluctant step back from Kaidan, tucking her hands into her pockets so she won’t reach for him again  _ or  _ fiddle with the fabric of her shirt. 

“Thank you for inviting me.” She’s not really sure what to say, but she knows she doesn’t want the night to end here. “It was amazing.”

“I’m glad you could come.” His voice is still low, husky almost, and it makes her cheeks heat. She’s grateful, suddenly, for the darkness surrounding them. “It’s my favorite out of all the festivals.”

“Well, there are a lot to choose from, so that says a lot.” Her lips still taste like blueberries when she licks them, and,  _ oh shit,  _ Kaidan’s eyes drop to watch the motion. She takes a half-step closer to him, fingers itching to touch him.

He leans forward too, lifting one hand like he’s going to reach for her. It pauses halfway between them, suspended in midair, and when he speaks, his voice is nearly a whisper. 

“Hazel, I…”

“We’ll see you bright and early tomorrow, Shepard!” Joker’s voice cuts between them with such force that they both take a full step back. Kaidan’s hand goes to the back of his neck and Hazel turns with her jaw clenched to see the shopkeeper on the next dock, waving at her with his hand that’s not holding onto his wife. “Gotta get those fall seeds!”

Hazel forces one hand out of her pocket and waves back. “I’ll be there when you open.”

The silence is back, but now it’s something sticky and painful, and Kaidan’s not quite looking at her when she turns back to him.

“Sorry,” she says even though she doesn’t really know what she’s apologizing for. The distance between them is just a scant few inches, but it feels like miles. “I, uh. I should go. I have an early morning. Lot of, uh, lot of work on the farm with the new season.”

She hooks her thumb over her shoulder toward her farm like he doesn’t know where she lives and takes a step back. 

“Of course. Have a good night.”

It’s not until she gets tucked into bed with Cinnamon cuddled against her side that she realizes he called her Hazel.


	4. Fall, Year 1

**Early Fall, Year 1**

The beginning of fall hits the same way the beginning of summer had. Weeds she hadn’t noticed spring up overnight, a giant mushroom grows in the middle of the field she’d cleared out for eggplants and she has to cut that down with an  _ axe,  _ and when it’s time to plow for seeds, it seems like there are dozens of new rocks in her way even though it’s only been a few months since she set up the summer crops she’s replacing.

It’s almost enough to keep her mind off Kaidan and watching the jellyfish together.

Almost, but not  _ quite _ . 

Farming is quiet work, and even though her brain is scrambling to make sense of the task list she wasn’t expecting, she has plenty of time to fight with herself over whether or not he was going to kiss her, or if she was misinterpreting it, or if she’s just so desperate for it that she’s completely making things up. She’s never had quite that problem before, but everything is new and she’s stressed and tired and she’s still healing from the mines and maybe she should just never mention this again ever and pretend it didn’t happen.

Never mentioning it again is both terrifying and a relief and she doesn’t know which is worse.

Trips into town for the first several days of the season are short and errand-focused. She buys seeds and fertilizer, and then  _ more  _ seeds and fertilizer, and then a few spring trees when she looks over her bank account and realizes she’s doing better than she thought she would be by this point in the year, and then she gets a few more hens, and then she gets a letter from Anderson announcing the Stardew Valley Fair and the grange display, and she has to turn all her focus into figuring out what products she can bring.

Why didn’t anyone tell her about this before? She would’ve had time to collect things all year long, not just a week!

She’s still chewing over this new problem when she wanders into the clinic on the Friday before the fair to get the rest of her stitches removed, because her cuts are definitely healed enough for that and if she has to avoid scratching the sutures one more day she’s going to lose her  _ mind.  _

And, not that she would tell Kaidan this, but she wants to go back into the mines this weekend now that she has her farm set up for fall the way she wants. The Junimos still want something they’re calling “void essence,” which sounds disgusting, and she has to go down if she wants them to fix the boiler room, which she absolutely does before winter comes around.

The clinic’s bell jingles as she pushes her way through, but the whole place is empty. Ashley’s off for the day (and, if Hazel’s honest with herself, that’s part of the reason she decided to come in today instead of yesterday) and Kaidan’s nowhere to be seen.

She pushes her way through to the back, then leans against Kaidan’s open office door. He’s at his desk, medical coat draped over the back of his chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and his head cradled in his hands as he reads something on the desk.

He jumps when she knocks on the door like she scared him, and she presses her lips together to try and stop herself from laughing at him when he starts to blush. 

“Shepard,” he says, voice low. He clears his throat as she feels herself start to blush too and tries again. “Shepard. You didn’t get hurt again, did you?”

“Who, me? What gave you that idea?” He narrows his eyes at her but relaxes when she lets out a small laugh. “No, I just thought you could take out the rest of my stitches for me?” She bats her eyelashes at him in a way that’s too exaggerated to look like flirting, and he cracks a smile.

“I can definitely take a look at them. Here, let me just…” He trails off and makes a vague gesture at his desk, and Hazel waves him off as she sits on the table and crosses her legs at the ankles. He closes the book and pushes it off to the side before she can make out more than  _ Ferngill Journal _ and then stands up to pull his coat back on and wash his hands at the little sink.

He walks back over to her as he pulls on his gloves, and she lays back without him asking her too.

This is even worse than the last time she’d let him look at her stitches, now that she has the memory of the way the blue light danced over him at the beach, the way he’d looked at her before he said her name. She stares at the ceiling and tries to keep her pulse under control this time as he checks her stitches and announces she was right, they can come out today.

“Try to go more than two weeks without needing more of these, if you can.” His tone of voice isn’t quite right for him to be teasing, and when she tries to meet his eyes, he’s still focused on pulling the stitches out and doesn’t look back.

“Well, since you asked so nicely.”

The next stitch comes out with a harder tug than the others and Hazel hisses at the sting.

Kaidan winces.

“Sorry,” he says.

Silence falls over them again and Hazel catches herself holding her breath until Kaidan starts talking again. 

“I know you’re going to go back into the mines.” Hazel opens her mouth to protest, but he doesn’t pause to let her speak. “You can’t help yourself, and I get it, I do. I just worry about you.”

She feels warm all over at the admission. He worries about her?

“I don’t want to have to come down there again to drag you back out.”

He meets her gaze finally with a little smile, and she smiles back even as her mood swings back to being confused. Does he worry about her, or is he just tired of having to stitch her back together in a panic? 

“I don’t know, Kaidan, I hear you handled yourself pretty well.” Jack had just shrugged when Hazel asked about Kaidan’s role in her rescue, which meant she didn’t have anything to make fun of him about, and Zaeed had said he was glad he hadn’t had to carry her to the surface. Both reactions make her think he did more than just walk down and haul her out. “Maybe we’d make a good spelunking team.”

He snorts and steps back, pulling his gloves off. 

“I like to save the spelunking for special occasions,” he tells her. 

She pulls her shirt back down as she sits up. “Pity. I bet you looked cute in that headlamp.”

He looks at her from the corner of his eyes and doesn’t respond, but she thinks she can see a little dusting of red on his cheeks, which is also pretty cute.

But maybe flirting with him while he’s washing her germs off his hands is bad form.

“Will you be at the fair on Monday? I’ll let you eat some of my grange display after it’s judged.” She offers him what she hopes is a winning smile and can’t help but let it grow when he smiles back.

“As long as it’s nothing with spice berries or cheese.”

She snaps her fingers and slides off the table onto her feet. “Well, it was just going to be nine individual cheesy spice berry casseroles, so I guess you’re out of luck.”

His face twists into a grimace. “I hope you’re joking.”

“You’ll have to come find out, I guess. I’ll see you then?” She lifts her eyebrows because he hasn’t actually given her an answer, and her shoulders relax when he nods.

\---

So  _ maybe _ she spends Saturday and Sunday in the mines, and  _ maybe _ she trips over one of those stupid crabs and gets a huge bruise on her hip, but, hey! She gets the void essences she needs for the Junimos, and she doesn’t need to see Kaidan for help, and she’s  _ pretty _ sure she won’t be limping on Monday so he never has to know she got hurt again.

The boiler room is almost done, and that’s what’s most important, right?

\---

Hazel gets to the town square an hour before she’s supposed to so she has time to set up her grange display. She has about a million eggs to arrange into a star with a gradient pattern, bottles of wine to set up like a rainbow, a handful of poppies for color, and more bundles of wheat than fit in the display to house it all. It’s not as good as she wanted it to be, but it’s not bad for only having a week of notice. She’s not sure she’ll beat out Joker, but she didn’t embarrass herself at least.

There are dozens of tourists making themselves right at home in the town square, wandering around to coo over the grange displays, eating Wrex’s food, and playing the games set up opposite the displays.

She stands by her display, chatting with the visitors. She watches as Sam wins the game of chance so many times in a row that the vendor turns an impressive shade of red before banning her and her pile of tokens from playing. Jasmine runs around with Miranda Lawson’s son with all the energy Hazel wishes she had.

Anderson comes over to shoo Hazel away from the displays so he can do the judging in peace, and she lets him because Kaidan is standing behind him with two cups of coffee in his hands. She looks from his face to the coffees and back again, and floats closer to him. The breeze picks up and swirls dried leaves around them, and he starts to chuckle.

“Oh, these are both for me. Sorry to get your hopes up.”

“Oh, no, I was just surprised it took you so long to start bringing a spare coffee with you.” Her grin grows as he laughs, a little pride swirling up in her at his reaction. That pride slides right into delight when he hands her the still-steaming cup from his left hand. She recognizes the taste right away because it matches the cup she had this morning; he must like the beans she gave him, because they were used for this pot.

It also means he brought this to her from his apartment. He made her coffee at home and brought it to her at the fair.

If he asks why she’s flushed this time, she’s going to blame it on sitting in the sun all morning.

“Your display looks amazing.” She looks up at him from the corner of her eyes as they wander toward the area set up for games. “How long did it take you to get all those eggs set up like that?”

“Mmm…” She sips more of her coffee as she thinks. “Probably like. Forty-five minutes this morning, for the whole thing. It doesn’t look as good as I wanted it to, but I only found out about the competition last week. I’ll win next year, now that I know.”

Kaidan sputters on his coffee and stops walking. Hazel takes another two steps before she realizes and turns back. “You pulled all that together in a week?”

“I mean, yeah?” She quirks her eyebrows at him. “I knew about the fair earlier, obviously, but I didn’t know about the competition. What?”

He shakes his head and blinks like he’s trying to bring himself back to his senses, then he gives her a crooked smile. “I can’t believe you did all of that in a week.”

“Oh, well.” She waves his compliment off and looks around for a distraction, finally finding one in the slingshot booth. “Come on, see if you can beat me.”

Kaidan follows her without pushing the grange discussion, and they both pay the vendor their gold and take up their slingshots. As the targets begin to swing back and forth, Hazel watches them to see if she can make out a pattern to follow. Next to her, Kaidan raises the slingshot and releases his rock, knocking down three targets at once.

Oh, okay.

It’s like  _ that. _

Her first rock misses, and so does the next. Beside her, Kaidan has knocked down five more targets and doesn’t show signs of slowing down.

She  _ really  _ thought she’d be better than this.

When the timer finally digs and the targets finally stop moving, Hazel has knocked over a grand total of nine targets and Kaidan has thirty-two. She stares at him, mouth agape, and she can see he  _ tries  _ not to smile, but his smirk grows against his will.

_ “Kaidan.  _ Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

His smile fully breaks free, and she thinks he stands up a little straighter at the praise. “I’ve lived here a few years. You pick up a few things.”

“Huh.” Hazel keeps staring at him as he collects his star tokens and tucks them in his pocket, and then she lets him lead her away from the booth so the next people can give it a try. “Why’d you move here, anyway?”

Silence stretches between them, but it doesn’t feel awkward. It’s anticipatory, almost, and Hazel lets it linger as they walk through the attractions. The coffee’s still warm in the styrofoam cup, and she lets it heat her from the inside out. The fishing game is full, so they pause at the back of the line to watch.

“I was working at a hospital in the city before I moved here.” Kaidan’s still watching the game, so Hazel does too, only turning her body toward him and tilting her head so she can hear his low voice more clearly. “I was with one of the other doctors there for… a long time. It was messy, at the end. I came here to clear my head, intending to stay for a few days, and just… fell in love with the town. The old doctor had retired and they needed someone. I haven’t looked back since.”

He’s still not looking at her, but there’s a faint blush on his cheeks when she glances up at him.

“It’s hard to leave somewhere you’re comfortable to start a whole new life. It’s brave.”

He looks back at her, finally, and he smiles. “Well, you would know. You did the same thing.”

She clicks her tongue at him and looks back at the tourists taking their sweet time at the fishing game. She drinks more of her coffee to buy a little time.

“I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.”

Kaidan snorts, and when she looks up at him, prepared to be offended he thought she was, he’s just smirking at her. At her suspicious glance, he just nods toward the fishing game. She rolls her eyes at him, and she’s rewarded with a warm chuckle before he picks the thread of conversation back up.

“And what brought you to Pelican Town, Shepard?” He tosses his empty cup underhand into a nearby trash can, and it sails right into the open container. “Other than the farm.”

“Decided data entry isn’t for me.” They pay the vendor their gold and select their poles. “If I had to fill in one more spreadsheet I would have gotten carpal tunnel.”

“Farming seemed like the safer option?”

Hazel smiles at the teasing note in his voice and casts her line. “Yeah. Stop talking, you’ll scare the fish.”

“Oh, is that how it works?”

_ “Shh.” _

He falls silent after a huffed laugh, and she smiles the whole time she plays the game. It’s an easy one, or at least easier than the slingshot game was, and she catches almost exactly twice as many fish as Kaidan does.

She  _ tries _ not to gloat, she really does. He’s not fooled.

“Should we try that game of chance? The guy yelled at Sam earlier because she wiped him out of tokens.”

Kaidan scans the area around them and then nods, gesturing for Hazel to go first. She does, counting her tokens as she walks, and then plops the entire pile down on the table. After a second, another pile appears next to hers as Kaidan leans around her to contribute to the pot. 

At her incredulous look, he just shrugs.

“What’s your bet? Pick a color!” The vendor smiles with bored eyes and Hazel glances from the wheel to Kaidan, who shrugs, and then back.

“Green.”

“The lady chooses green!”

Hazel scoffs under her breath as the man gives the wheel a hard yank. It spins fast to start with, the arrow clicking on each segment and slowing down so much her shoulders start to slump as it looks like it’s going to stop a couple segments before orange turns to green.

And then at the very last second, the wheel clicks one more time and lands solidly in the first green segment. Hazel lets out a delighted gasp that makes Kaidan stifle a chuckle behind her, and then the vendor is passing over their winnings with a clearly disgruntled look on his face. 

The message is clear: Sam’s winning streak will  _ not  _ be repeated, and they should move along.

They take their winnings to the prize table, pausing only long enough for Hazel to throw her cup away now that the coffee is, sadly, all gone. Hazel’s eyeing the scarecrow when Kaidan’s elbow bumps into hers.

“Look, they have a stardrop this year.” He points to the back of the display where a purple fruit sits in a little paper nest, all by itself next to a sign that says  _ 2,000 tokens. _ “Have you ever had one?”

“I don’t even know what it is.”

Kaidan’s face lights up when he hears her answer, turning to run his fingers over their combined pile of tokens. It must be enough, because he pushes them forward and Joker scoops them up only to replace them with the fruit.

“Come on. You’ll love this.”

They step to the side, and Kaidan takes the fruit in both hands while Hazel tosses the tray. He cracks it in half, splitting it almost exactly down the middle, and passes it to her. She stares at it — the inside of the fruit is a deeper purple but it looks almost like the flesh of a peach. It’s sweet when she sniffs it, but then she looks up and Kaidan’s staring at her with his half of the fruit still in his hands like he’s waiting for her to go first.

She closes her eyes and takes a bite. The taste bursts on her tongue, but it isn’t like a peach or a grape or anything she was expecting it to. She makes a surprised sound, half exclamation and half moan as the taste fully registers on her tongue.

It’s not a fruit at all. It tastes like… cookies and hot chocolate with whipped cream, like nights cuddled up by a fire, like the embrace of a loved one, like home. 

It’s the best thing she’s ever tasted in her whole entire life.

Her lips and tongue are tingling, just a bit, when she finishes her portion of the fruit, and she opens her eyes to see its dark juice staining her fingers. She pops them in her mouth to lick them clean before she has time to think better of it, then blushes furiously when she sees Kaidan staring at her.

“Sorry. What the hell  _ was  _ that?”

Kaidan blinks once and then shakes his head, and she can see his fingers are stained purple too. He tries to wipe them off on each other before he gives up and just tucks his hands into his pockets.

“A stardrop. It’s…” He trails off as his face squints in concentration. “It’s a fruit, but it’s incredibly rare. They say it only grows here. I’ve only seen it in the Valley.”

“It was  _ amazing.  _ Thank you, Kaidan.”

She smiles at him, and he smiles back. 

A crash and the sudden shriek of a child make them both jump, but Kaidan stands up a little straighter and squares his shoulders as he looks past Hazel into the crowd. It’s like he becomes a different person when he’s in doctor mode, and she absolutely can’t deny that the confidence is a good look on him.

Hazel turns just in time to see Miranda waving Kaidan down, her little boy crying in her arms. Kaidan pushes past her with a parting squeeze to her elbow, a silent apology, but she doesn’t mind. It’s an emergency of some sort, and she can only hope Miranda’s kid is okay.

Anderson takes Kaidan’s place, popping up with a wide smile on his face and a little baggie in his hands. “Where were you? You won the grange display!”

“Oh, I didn’t know — I’m sorry — thank you?”

The baggie holds another pile of star tokens, and she peers at them as Anderson congratulates her and then slips back into the crowd.

She turns back to the vendor. “I’ll take that scarecrow, please.”

**Mid-Fall, Year 1**

Tali already has three options for expanding the house when Hazel arrives with coffee and fresh-bought cookies, sketched out with beautiful attention to detail so Hazel can decide how she wants the outside of her house to look once the addition is complete. They sit around the table in her kitchen to drink and go over the plans, stopping just long enough to greet Garrus when he comes in to snag one of the scones on his way to tinker in his lab.

“He always has to work on his calibrations,” Tali explains with a chuckle and a fond smile, tipping her head up so Garrus will give her a kiss on his way by. He waves to Hazel without falling for the trap to get him to stay and talk, heading back to whatever work he does that keeps him busy all the time.

Hazel picks out a design that adds a full kitchen and a bedroom with a small office space, leaving the bulk of the cabin as the new living space. It also, as Tali helpfully points out, leaves options for creating a second floor for more bedrooms if she decides she needs them. The look Tali gives her when she explains about a second expansion makes Hazel’s face flame, which in turn makes Tali laugh and pat Hazel’s hand.

“We see the way you and Kaidan have been dancing around each other,” she says, helping herself to another scone. “I don’t know how they do things in the city anymore, but around here you’ll have to give the person you’re interested in a bouquet for them to know you’re serious.”

“A… bouquet?” Hazel hasn’t even  _ talked  _ to Kaidan about all this. She hasn’t asked him out or had a real meal with him, just the two of them, and she doesn’t really know how he feels about her.

But sometimes… the way he looks at her…

“You can buy them at Joker’s, but I bet you have some lovely flowers on your farm.” At Hazel’s nod, Tali continues, “Just pick your favorites and tie a ribbon around them. He’ll know what it means.”

Hazel fiddles with her empty coffee cup, not quite meeting Tali’s eye. “Shouldn’t… shouldn’t Kaidan be the one bringing  _ me  _ flowers?”

Tali laughs again, this time more gently. “I think we both know you’ll have to be the one to make the first move, Shepard.”

She thought Kaidan was making the first move at the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies, but that was  _ weeks  _ ago and he hasn’t brought it up again since. And after spending time with him at the Fair…

“Yeah, maybe. Thank you, Tali. Now, talk to me about what kind of stove I can get in this new kitchen of my dreams you’re building me.”

\---

Hazel  _ does _ have flowers growing on her farm. She has a whole bed of fairy roses out for the bees, and she watches the sun set across their bright petals as she eats dinner out on her little porch with Cinnamon tucked against her side.

Maybe.

Maybe.

\---

She thinks about Tali’s words as she takes care of the animals, as she checks the health of her crops, as she runs errands around town, as she tries to catch the exact kind of fish the Junimos are asking for, as she skims the upper levels of the mines for more copper to use in upgrading farm machines.

She thinks about Tali’s words as she remembers the way Kaidan rushed into the mine to save her life, as she remembers the way he smiled when she brought him gifts from the farm, as she remembers the way he brought her coffee and the way he looked at her when she sucked the stardrop juice off her fingers.

She thinks about Tali’s words as she watches the bees play over the flowers, as she touches their dark leaves and bright petals, as she cuts a few and brings them inside to set in water.

She might be wrong, but she doesn’t think she is. Kaidan has never seemed overly demonstrative in his affections for anyone. She knows Ashley’s his closest friend in town, but it’s hard to tell just based on how he acts around her.

But, he brought Hazel coffee, and she would have sworn he reached for her on the docks.

So, maybe she’s wrong, but she’s tired of sitting around waiting to find out. She’ll take him the flowers, and she’ll talk to him… in the morning. It’s dark out, Cinnamon’s asleep upside down on the couch, and her stomach is growling.

Tomorrow.

Definitely.

\---

Saturday dawns rainy and cold. She pulls on a thick sweatshirt she’s had since her first year in college, worn and comfortable with threadbare spots and holes along the hem from age. She looks at the fairy roses sitting in their water as she drinks her coffee for breakfast, and then she runs to the coop with her sweatpants tucked in her rubber boots to collect her eggs for the day.

She does her chores with the same level of care she always does, petting each animal in turn before she goes back to the house to start the goat milk on its way to goat cheese. She takes a too-hot shower and gets back in her pajamas and curls up on the couch with Cinnamon draped over her lap.

The TV is on low, just old  _ Livin’ off the Land _ reruns, and she tries to dive deep into the harlequin romance she grabbed from the library a couple of weeks ago (and badly needs to return), but her eyes keep bouncing from the yellowed pages to the roses on her kitchen table and back again.

Flowers.

Book.

Flowers.

Book.

Flowers. Book.

Flowers, book.

Flowers, flowers, flowers.

Ashley doesn’t work at the clinic on Saturdays; she doesn’t even think Kaidan is technically in the office on Saturdays, but he’ll be upstairs in his little apartment, and she can’t wait one more minute.

When will she get a better chance?

If she waits for the perfect opportunity, she’ll never do it, and Tali’s right. She shouldn’t wait around for Kaidan.

She gets dressed again in real clothes, jeans and a long-sleeved purple shirt without any sort of graphic design on it, her rubber boots and her raincoat on top. She wraps the flowers in paper and tucks them in her backpack next to some ears of corn the Junimos have been waiting on for months now, just in case she needs an excuse to leave early… and then she heads into town, going straight to Kaidan’s clinic with her hood low over her face.

The door’s unlocked when she tests the handle, and she stops just inside to remove her muddy boots and dripping raincoat before she heads up the stairs.

She knocks on Kaidan’s door and waits.

And she waits.

And then the door swings open and she’s standing face-to-face with a Kaidan whose eyebrows are drawing together in concern.

“Are you hurt?” He grabs her elbow and pulls, not quite yanking her into the brighter light of his apartment. It’s more of an encouraging tug, and she lets him move her where he can see her better, can see she’s not bruised or bloodied, not this time. “Shepard?”

“Sorry, no, I’m fine. I told you I’d be more careful, didn’t I?” He makes a face that somehow says both  _ yes you did  _ and  _ obviously I didn’t believe you though.  _ “I, uh. I brought you something.”

This is more comfortable, more familiar, and he smiles at her as he takes a step back to give her more space, and she finally gets a good look at what he looks like on his off days, when he’s not in full Doctor Mode.

She might be wearing grown-up clothes today, but it’s obvious that Kaidan wasn’t expecting to see another human soul. He’s wearing basically the same outfit she had before she left the house; an old threadbare t-shirt that may once have had a Tunneler’s logo on it, gray sweatpants, and the ugliest pair of slippers she’s ever seen.

She doesn’t realize she’s given him an inappropriately slow up-and-down until she’s looking back at his blushing face.

“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting…” He trails off like he decided he doesn’t need to apologize for wearing his own pajamas in his own home and just blinks at her instead.

“Sorry, sorry.” Okay, they have got to stop apologizing to each other or nothing is going to get accomplished. “I brought you something.” She slips one arm free of her backpack so she can swing it around to the front of her body. “Uh.” She almost panics and hands him the corn instead, but she pulls the flowers out and shoves their paper wrapping back in her bag.

“You brought me flowers?” 

He sounds incredulous and, just for a second, just for the time it takes to look from the flowers back up to his face, she thinks he doesn’t understand what the gesture means, that Tali lied to her for some reason, but then… then she finally looks at his face, at his red cheeks and bright eyes and the smile twitching at the corner of his lips. 

He knows.

“Yeah. I did.” She holds them out a little farther so he’ll take them, and his fingers brush over hers as he does.

He moves to the little kitchenette and she trails after him, trapped in his wake, only stopping when she reaches a wall of model airplanes, meticulously assembled and painted and displayed in individual boxes on the wall.

“Oh, Kaidan, these are gorgeous. I didn’t know you made model planes.” She lifts one hand to touch the closest plane to her but changes her mind last second. There’s another plane half-assembled on the table, the unused parts laid out in an orderly grid. The lid is off the glue, and she replaces it as the kitchen tap turns on and then off.

“I wanted to be a pilot when I was a kid. Talked to an Air Force recruiter on my eighteenth birthday.” When she turns around to face him, Kaidan’s not quite looking at her, arranging the sunflowers in a drinking glass. “Turns out migraines are a disqualifying condition.”

Now that she’s looking at him, she’s drawn back into his orbit, floating closer until she can reach out and runs her hand across his shoulders. “Ashley mentioned the migraines.”

It doesn’t seem like he’s looking for sympathy, and she doesn’t think he’d appreciate it if she gave him any now. He shrugs the shoulder she’s not touching and turns toward her, catching her hand with his before she can pull away.

“I don’t get them as often as I used to.” He traces his thumb over her knuckles. “Usually just when I get too stressed.”

Hazel frowns. “When you rescued me from the mines?”

He finally meets her gaze head-on, and she squeezes his fingers tighter at the brightness of his eyes. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.” Kaidan tugs her a half step closer and she goes willingly, moving into his space like she’s always belonged there. “I wanted to kiss you at the Dance of the Moonlight Jellies.”

She  _ knew  _ it. She’s going to kill Joker. “No one’s here to interrupt us this time.” She rests her hand on his chest, and she can feel his heart beating against her fingers, solid and steady.

He brushes her hair off her cheek and tucks in behind her ear before cupping her jaw with warm fingers. “Hazel, I… can I kiss you now?”

If he doesn’t, she’s going to spontaneously combust. “Please.”

He flashes her another crooked smile before she closes her eyes and tilts her chin up to meet his lips in a slow kiss. It lingers, sending shivers down her spine and setting off sparks behind her eyelids. His fingers clutch her tighter, but she pulls her hand out of his to cup the back of his head instead, holding him against her as their first kiss blends into their second.

His body is so warm against hers, wide and solid and strong, and his free arm slips around her waist to hold her up as he leans deeper into her space. He tastes faintly of toothpaste when his tongue meets hers, and her backpack drops heavily to the floor just before he pulls away to rest his forehead against hers.

“Guess I should’ve brought flowers over earlier?” She wraps both arms around his neck now, holding onto him as they sway, just the littlest bit, to the jazz music still playing faintly over his radio. 

He chuckles a little and stands up straight so he can nod. When she opens her eyes, he’s already looking at her. “How much earlier?”

He might not have been fishing for sympathy earlier, but he’s definitely fishing for a compliment now. His lips are turned up in a smile, a soft expression smoothing out the fine lines by his eyes. This close, she can see the gray coming in at his temples and a little wrinkle trying to form between his eyebrows, and he’s never looked more handsome.

“Well.” She pauses, considering how long ago she wanted to get to know him as more than the town doctor, more than a friend. “Here’s a hint: hospitals don’t make me nervous.”

She can see the second he puts two-and-two together because his eyebrows lift and his cheeks darken in another blush.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You…” Well, time for some honesty. “I wasn’t looking for anything like this when I moved here. I  _ hated _ my life before and wanted something completely different; and I found it. I love my farm and the town and…” She pauses again, because what she almost said isn’t quite what she meant, because she’s not quite ready yet. “And you’ve become the best part of it all. I want to be with you even though you made me wait all summer.”

He’s kissing her again almost before she’s finished talking, smiling against her lips like he just can’t help himself. She gasps as his fingers slip under her sweatshirt, hands warm against the small of her back without reaching up higher, and tucks hers under the collar of his tee to rest against his spine.

He starts guiding her back as he keeps kissing her, pausing after each kiss to speak like he just can’t keep his mouth off of hers long enough to get a full sentence out. 

“Hazel, you are the most… infuriating… brave… beautiful woman… I’ve ever met.”

Her legs hit the arm of his couch, and they turn once more so he can sit down. He starts to pull her to sit next to him, but she settles in his lap instead, knees on either side of his hips. She hovers, just for a moment, just long enough to see him nod, and then she lets him pull her down until their hips are flush and she can feel the heat of him all over.

Maybe they have been dancing around this for too long, but maybe… maybe that wasted time isn’t wasted at all, not if it led to this need that has her trembling against him.

“I’ll take this as a ‘yes,’ then?” Hazel brushes her nose against his and holds her lips away from him, even when he tilts his chin up to coax her into kissing him again. “Kaidan?”

“Yes, yes. Of  _ course.”  _ He tries to grab another kiss from her but she resists again, and he bites his lower lip. “I may have been here for years, but you’re still the best part of this town for me too.”

She doesn’t resist him this time, just gives in to the hand he tangles in her hair to pull her mouth down to his. This kiss is deeper, more desperate, like he’s going to consume her completely. She gives as good as she gets, digging her fingers into the back of his shoulders, sucking at his tongue and biting his lower lip when he pulls away to breathe, never letting more space get between them than absolutely necessary for breathing, learning his patterns and letting his hands roam up and down her back, over her thighs, around to her ass until she’s afraid she’ll never be able to stop touching him.

“Kaidan, you… oh,  _ please…” _

She doesn’t know what she wants to ask him to do, but as soon as she leans back to speak, his lips are on her throat and she feels like she’s going to vibrate out of her skin.

His beard is growing in, raspy and dark, and the short hairs scrape against her even as his tongue soothes the burn left behind. His teeth pinch her skin just where her sweatshirt usually covers her collarbone, not enough to bruise but enough to make her grind down against him, enough for her pleasure to cause his.

He moans against her skin, and she loses control at the sound, a bolt of heat going straight through her as she struggles to comprehend  _ wanting  _ someone as much as she wants Kaidan.

“You’re gonna kill me.”

He chuckles against her shoulder and that’s almost as bad as the moan. She stops trying to pull his shirt up from the back and digs her fingers into his hair to pull him back to look at her. He goes easy, eyes dark and lips wet, and waits for her to speak again.

“Let’s move this to a bed.”

It takes him a second to react to the suggestion, like he’s surprised she brought it up even though  _ she  _ showed up at his apartment and  _ she  _ climbed in his lap, but then his face blooms into a beautiful smile and he starts easing her off his lap. He tugs at his sweatpants as he stands, but there’s really no hiding how hard he is or the little wet spot that’s bloomed in the gray fabric.

She looks slowly from the accidental display up to his face. “You’re the doctor; you have condoms around here right?”

Kaidan snags her jaw with one hand to pull her in for another kiss, smiling against her lips, and then he nods as he pulls away. 

“Uh, yes. I do. Downstairs. I’ll go grab, uh, some, and I’ll come back. Just, uh,” he kisses her again, “stay here.”

She wants to ask where she would go, but she just nods and kisses him one more time for good measure. “I’ll be here.”

He hurries, shuffling in his ridiculous slippers through his apartment door and down into the clinic below, leaving her alone by the couch. She turns slowly, gaze catching on the sunflowers in the kitchen before she spots his bed, neatly made and tucked away behind a divider. 

She goes straight there, moving the divider out of the way so he won’t think she left somehow, and she’s just pulled her shirt off when the apartment door opens and closes again.

“Hazel, do you… oh.” The footsteps get closer and then there’s a warm hand on her spine, sliding around to her hip, lips on her shoulder like he can’t bear to keep from kissing her one more second. She leans into him and drops her shirt on the floor so she can redirect his hand up to her breast, encouraging him even more to keep going.

He squeezes with gentle pressure before he pulls away, dropping a few foil wrappers on the quilt so he can use both hands to unhook her bra. She lets the fabric fall down her arms as his hands slide around her sides to her stomach to pull her body flush against his. She leans into him and bites her lip as he touches her with gentle hands, almost reverent in the way his fingers glide over her skin.

She’s always admired his fingers.

And his hands.

And the rest of him.

His lips trace up the curve of her neck to her ear, teeth catching her skin just a bit when she grinds against him more purposefully. He’s still beautifully hard against her, and she lets him keep her pressed against him until she just can’t stand it anymore and she just has to kiss him. 

She turns in his arms and gets her hands up under his shirt before he has time to grab her again. It’s up and off and on the floor and then her fingers are dragging through the dark hair on his chest and his head is tipping back as his eyes dip closed.

“Hey,” she breathes, pulling his attention back to her as one of her hands slips down over his stomach to tuck just her fingertips under the waistband of his sweatpants while the other cups his jaw to guide his mouth back to hers. She swallows his moan and sways back as he leans forward, shivering all over as he pushes her back, urging her onto the bed and up to rest her head on the pillows.

Kaidan hovers over her with one leg between hers and his elbow holding his weight up by her head, and she bends one knee to encourage his hips down into hers. He ignores it, instead brushing his knuckles across her cheek and then down across her collarbone.

When he finally puts his palm flat against her ribs, it’s almost a relief to have him really touching her again. Hazel arches up toward him and watches his face as he watches her. The way he touches her is reverent, careful, like he can’t believe she’s lying under him even though the lights are all on and it’s the middle of the day.

She’s never, ever been touched like this. She’s never been looked at like she’s the center of the universe, and it makes her breath catch in her throat and tears start to burn at the back of her eyes with the weight of it, the responsibility.

“Kaidan?” He pauses with his fingers on the button of her jeans, freezing in place as he looks up to meet her gaze. “Kiss me.”

The flash of worry on his face melts into a smile and he leans down to obey. She throws one arm around his shoulders to hold him against her and she uses her free hand to pull the button free on her jeans.

She didn’t want him to  _ stop, _ she just wanted him to kiss her. 

She can’t believe she waited so long to say something to him. She should have asked him to dinner back at the luau like she wanted, or pushed a little harder at the jellyfish thing, or spoken up sooner at the fair.

Now that she’s had a taste of him, she doesn’t think she’ll be able to go another day without it.

He keeps kissing her like he understands, like maybe he feels the same way too, and he slides his hand with those beautiful long fingers into her panties at the same time he presses his tongue into her mouth.

He answers her moan with one of his own. It’s a beautiful sound, and they pass it back and forth as their kiss continues and deepens the same way his fingers do. 

She never wants him to stop.

She rocks her hips up into his touch, encouraging him with her aborted little thrusts and moans muffled against his lips, desperation growing as he finds the perfect spot to rub against inside her. She should have known his hands would be this good, with those long fingers and the attentive way he watches her.

It’s brilliant and perfect and almost too much, and she squirms under him. It’s like he learns from each touch, because each press inside of her feels better than the last. She has to rip her face away from his to breathe, and even then his fingers don’t hesitate as he moves to kiss her throat, then the valley between her breasts, then to catch one dark nipple between his lips.

She still has her jeans on, and they trap her legs when she tries to spread them wider. When she squirms this time, Kaidan releases her nipple with a sharp pop and pulls his hand free.

“Okay?”

“Wonderful. Take your pants off.”

Kaidan collapses onto her with a huff of air that she recognizes as a laugh when he presses it against her neck. She wraps both arms around his shoulders and smiles into his hair, a pleased feeling coursing through her now that she knows they can laugh together even in bed.

He props himself back up on his elbows and hovers there long enough to give her a quick kiss before he rolls onto his back and lifts his hips up to shove his sweatpants down. She wants to watch him strip down, but she wants to get herself naked more.

She shucks her jeans off and leaves them on the floor, then she scoops up one of the condoms from where she knocked them off the bed and turns back around to find Kaidan already propped against the headboard, watching her with one hand cupping himself between his legs, watching her with his lips slightly parted.

“Ready?” Hazel holds up the condom she selected at random and raises her eyebrows

Kaidan nods and holds out his hand to take it from her, but she closes her fingers around it and crawls up the bed to straddle his thighs. He rests his hands on her hips and watches as she rips the packet open, but his eyes dip closed as she wraps her fingers around his cock. She allows herself a smug little smile as she really feels his weight for the first time, but she only teases him for a few slow strokes before she rolls the condom on and shifts her weight up to hover over his hips instead.

He looks up at her as he slides his hands from her hips up to her waist, and he smiles, the expression slowly blooming across his face as he studies hers.

She can’t help but lean across the distance between them to press her lips to his, letting the kiss linger as she reaches down with one hand to help guide him inside of her. She moves slowly, lowering herself just a little bit at a time, drawing out the pleasure of the first thrust while he stretches her out just enough to make her moan without pain.

She opens her eyes and breaks the kiss when he’s fully hilted in her, sitting up straight so she can see his face. His eyebrows are furrowed again, his lower lip caught between his teeth in an expression so painfully beautiful she can’t help but cup his jaw and draw her thumbs over his cheeks.

She’s not sure she’s ever felt this way before, about anyone.

Kaidan draws in a shuddering breath when her fingers trace his jawline, and his eyes are soft and dark when he looks back at her. His hands echo her movements on her waist, tracing little circles over soft flesh and rougher, darker scar tissue, and she thinks maybe, just maybe, this might be love after all.

His grip tightens without warning, not enough to hurt, but enough to let her know it’s time to move, and she shivers as it sends a thrill straight through her. He lifts up and she moves with him, letting him guide her movements into slow thrusts as she starts to ride him.

She watches his face for as long as she can, watching the dark flush spread over his skin and the sweat that begins to bead at his temples even in the cool air of his apartment.

He’s beautiful.

When it becomes too much, she lets her eyes fall shut and just focuses on how he feels. How it feels to be filled by him, how it feels to have his hands all over her like he can’t decide where to touch her next, her thighs or her waist or her breasts, or…  _ oh. _

His thumb finds its way between her thighs and her rhythm falters as her pleasure spikes.

Kaidan’s breath is warm against her throat, his chuckle that turns into a moan sends another thrill through her as he continues to press inside her and against her. She can’t do much more than hold onto his shoulders and try to keep moving her hips with him, but he nips at the underside of her jaw and surges even further into her space, tipping them both over so she’s on her back and he’s on top of her once more.

He holds one of her thighs steady as he uses his other hand to guide himself back into her, the slide easy and deep, and she clenches around him as soon as she can, partly out of pleasure and partly to tell him to stay close this time.

He stays kneeling over her, running his free hand up her stomach to her breasts while the other starts up that same slow, circular rhythm between her thighs again, and his first thrust is a torturously slow slide out and back in.

Her moan catches in her throat as he hits her deep, and she can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “Feel good?”

She struggles to answer him as he starts moving faster, reaching blindly for something to hold onto before catching his fingers in hers. He leans over her and presses her hand into the bed as his next thrust comes a little faster, pushing her answer from her lips in a voice louder than she meant, but no less honest for it.

“Yes!” She holds his fingers tighter and tries to get her legs up around his waist. “Please don’t stop.”

“Okay.” His rhythm falters a bit, and he guides her fingers to their joining and presses so she’ll know he wants her to take over this part for him. “Okay, okay.” When she gets the message, he bends over her completely, burying his face in the crook of her neck and thrusting hard and deep.

She buries the fingers of her left hand in his hair while her right fingers rub tight circles hard against her clit. She’s close, and she wants to come like this, with him inside of her, with his weight pressing her into his mattress.

She’s still teetering right on the edge when Kaidan turns his head just enough to breathe her name into her ear, his lips brushing against her skin as he does, and that’s all it takes. She calls his name and pulls his hair as she unravels, spiraling off into pleasure bright enough to white out her vision. 

Dimly, she registers Kaidan meeting his own end just after her, like hers pulled him down too. He presses deep inside her and grinds down like he’s trying to get impossibly closer, his body shuddering over her in a way that makes her stroke the back of his head to calm him down as she comes back to herself too.

He nuzzles against her as his muscles relax, pressing tiny kisses on her cheek and face until she starts giggling and pushing at his shoulders. He moves away, but not before pressing one more kiss to her lips.

She can feel him smiling.

Hazel stays on the bed and presses her thighs together as he pads away to the bathroom, and she admires the lines of his back and the curve of his ass as he goes.

It was hard to notice under the doctor’s coat, but he really does have a fantastic ass.

Kaidan comes back after a moment, and he snags her for another kiss when they pass each other on the way to the bathroom, moving with a confidence she’s only used to seeing from him when he’s in full doctor mode. It’s like now that he knows his feelings are reciprocated, he’s able to really  _ show _ her. She nips at his bottom lip and slips away to clean up.

He’s got his sweatpants back on when she comes out of the bathroom, and she catches him in the middle of pulling his shirt back on too. The second his head pops out of the fabric, his eyes are on her, staring at her without embarrassment as she walks over to him with a little more sway in her step than is absolutely necessary, just to watch the way his eyes dip down her body.

He wraps his arms around her waist when she gets close enough, just holding her body against his. He’s so warm, like his body is a furnace, and she wants to snuggle as close to him as is physically possible. Why bother getting dressed if she’s already planning on getting him back out of those sweatpants?

“Hey.” She lets the tip of her nose brush against his and watches the way his eyes start to dip closed before he realizes she’s not quite leaning in for a kiss.

His arms tighten. “Hey yourself. Do you have something you’re doing after this?” He finally snags her lips in a kiss, and she’s certain they’re on the same page about what to do with the rest of their afternoon.

He probably just didn’t want to assume and put his sweatpants on to be polite.

The only thing she wanted to do was…

“Oh, uh...” There are still five ears of her best corn in her backpack, waiting to be delivered to the Junimos. She looks at Kaidan’s lips and then into his eyes, wondering how he would react if he saw the little forest spirits. He’d believe her about them if he saw them with his own eyes, right? “I was actually about to run an errand, just to drop something off. Do you… want to come with me?”

If she’s going to be with Kaidan, and she’s going to be supporting the Junimos to restore the Community Center… she wants him to be on her side. She doesn’t want to have to hide this from him.

He blinks at her, like it’s taking her request a second to process, like he wasn’t expecting her to ask him to run  _ errands  _ with her so soon, but then he’s giving her the same little smile he always does and he nods at her.

“Yeah. I can do that.” He doesn’t let her go to get ready though, pulling her in for another kiss that lingers before he finally releases her.

They get dressed separately, though Hazel is sad to see the sweatpants replaced with a pair of jeans that don’t fit him  _ quite _ as snugly. Kaidan reaches out more than once to kiss her again, like he’s afraid she’s changed her mind since the last time he touched her.

She doesn’t mind.

She loves it.

At the door to the clinic, Hazel flips the hood of her raincoat up and then reaches out to take his hand in hers. He squeezes her fingers as they step out into the square together, and it feels like her heart skips a beat even though she’s sure that can’t literally be what happened. She doesn’t mention it, at least, just tugs Kaidan along behind her as she turns north toward the mountains instead of staying in the town proper.

“Are we going up to Tali’s place?” He sounds confused, maybe even a little hesitant to hear a yes out of her, and she takes pity on him by glancing over her shoulder. He’s looking over her at the path that leads up to Garrus and Tali’s, a navy umbrella open over his head, and she has to tug on his hand to get him to actually focus on her.

“Nope. Just in here.”

The Community Center is always unlocked, and the door opens on silent hinges. She can feel the hesitation in him, but he steps inside without saying anything or asking why they’re there. He just holds onto her hand and trusts her as she leads him into the old pantry.

“Okay. Stand here for a second.” She positions him by the door and starts to move ever into the room, turning back before she gets more than a step inside to press a kiss to his cheek. She leaves him smiling and kneels in front of the golden plaque on the floor, the one asking for five  _ of her best  _ ears of corn.

She takes out the ears she brought and puts them on the plaque, then steps back to Kaidan’s side, shushing him when he tries to ask what she’s doing.

“Watch.”

He takes her hand again but does as she asks, staring at the corn with one eyebrow raised, acting just attentive enough to let her know he’s being serious but doubting what she’s doing.

It doesn’t take long though. Only a few seconds pass before she hears the tell-tale squeaking of the Junimos and five of them appear almost out of thin air. They bounce up to the corn as Kaidan goes stiff beside her, his grip on her hand almost bruising, but he stays silent.

Their squeaking changes in pitch when they see Kaidan, and they bounce back and forth like they’re telling Hazel off for bringing a stranger with her this time. She smiles down at them and shows off their entwined fingers, and the squeaking changes to something more accepting. Each little creature picks up an ear of corn and thanks her in their own way before disappearing.

Kaidan doen’t move until she turns to him, and then it’s just to lean close to whisper, almost too quiet for her to hear: “What the fuck.”

“They’re called Junimos. They’re little spirits that help keep the Valley alive… and I’ve been helping them since the beginning of the summer.”

He’s so silent in the wake of her confession that the squeaking of a returning Junimo can be heard plain as day. They both look down to see a little green creature staring up at them with its little stalk waving gently above its head. It blinks once, slowly, and Hazel starts to kneel down so she can look at it from closer to its level. It obviously wants _ something, _ but what?

Kaidan grabs at her arm to pull her back, but she just pats his fingers and pulls herself free.

She’s safe. The Junimos wouldn’t hurt her.

The creature’s black eyes blink at her, then look up at Kaidan, then back at her. It chirps again, questioning, and hops a little closer.

It trills when she scoops it up in both hands, and she can’t help but smile back at her as she stands back up and holds it out to Kaidan. He meets her gaze with wide, panicked eyes, but she just steps a little closer to him so he can look down at the Junimo in her hands without touching it.

“It wants to meet you.”

It chirps again.

There’s another long silence before Kaidan manages to speak.

“Hello?” It comes out more like a question than anything else, but the Junimo chirps back and waves its little stalk. When Hazel glances up, she catches Kaidan smiling. “Uh. I’m Dr. Alenko. I work in the town.”

The Junimo trills and bounces once in Hazel’s grip, moving a little closer to him. It blinks up at her, then looks back at Kaidan, and then chirps.

“You can call him Kaidan,” Hazel says. “He’s friendly. Here.”

She holds the Junimo out to him again, and this time he takes it, cradling the little creature in his hands. He pulls it up to eye level to look at it, and they stare at each other for several seconds before Kaidan’s little grin bursts into a wide smile and the Junimo starts to chirp, its little arms waving around in the air.

“Oh, here.” Hazel takes the Junimo and lowers it to the floor; as soon as it’s within hopping distance, it leaps out of her hands and lands on the chipped floorboards. It hops a few more times toward the back of the room before it disappears. She looks back up at Kaidan and sees him still smiling. “They like you.”

“How can you tell?”

She shrugs. “I can understand them, kind of. It’s a long story.”

He takes her hand in his. “I’d love to hear it.”

“I’d love to tell you.”


	5. Fall, Year 2 (Epilogue)

“Do you need help packing up the fish?”

Hazel’s halfway inside the large chest freezer, bent over completely to reach the fish resting at the bottom of the container, when Kaidan’s voice makes her jump. She’s been collecting fish slowly over the last few weeks, and now she has enough to finish two of the Junimos’ wishlists at once.

Her mermaid pendant necklace bounces off the side of the freezer as she stands upright, refracting the dim light of the cellar just as pretty as it had the spring sunshine when Kaidan gave it her for her birthday in the spring even though he kept apologizing because it was so soon, too soon maybe, wasn’t it?

Even if it was too soon, it didn’t _feel_ too soon, so she has on the pendant, and they have matching iridium rings because that’s the Zuzu City tradition and she’s always wanted one, and he’s smiling at her from the bottom of the steps to the kitchen as she holds a frozen 38-inch tuna in both hands.

“Yeah, can you just grab that other crate?”

She dumps the tuna in the crate closer to her, and now they have two crates full of frozen fish to cart across the town to the Community Center. Last year this would have inspired curious questions from anyone they happened to meet, but somehow everyone’s gotten used to seeing Kaidan and Hazel walking around carrying random items seemingly without a destination in mind.

People really can get used to anything.

“I wonder if anyone’s going to put two-and-two together.” Kaidan’s got his crate of fish in his arms, his nose wrinkled just a bit even though they barely smell. He keeps talking as Hazel leads him back up the stairs. “It wasn’t obvious when the Junimos fixed your greenhouse, but the mining carts? The bridge?”

“People believe what they want to believe. The real question is how they’ll explain the Community Center’s repairs to themselves. It’s not like either of us actually have carpentry skills.”

They put the crates down on the kitchen counter and stop for an inventory check. It’s become something of a habit for rainy days over the last few months: package up whatever the Junimos need, check their backpacks -- hers for mining equipment and her sword, his for first-aid supplies and his slingshot -- and head out.

“All good?” Kaidan’s peering into his bag with the same precision he does everything in his life, and she hesitates long enough to be thankful she worked up the courage to take him those sunflowers, almost a year ago now. 

When he looks up to catch her staring, he smiles like he knows what she’s thinking, like he agrees.

“Yeah.” She looks in her bag to see everything’s there, including a few extra granola bars in case they make it through what Kaidan packed. “All good. Let’s go.”

This is familiar too. Raincoats, backpacks, boots, crates, and out the door they go. They have to take the long way up to the mountains since they want to stop by the Community Center, but that’s okay because it’s not too cold yet. Kaidan would even complain about being too warm underneath the hood of his raincoat if Hazel wasn’t fighting goosebumps.

They’re just used to different kinds of weather, is all, even now.

They don’t see another soul on the way to the Center, and Hazel lets them in with ease of practice. The whole building is almost complete, they just need a few more fish and a couple thousand more gold pieces and the Junimos will have everything they need. She’s not even the one doing the hard work, and she still feels a sense of pride when she sees how different the building looks now.

It doesn’t smell like rotting wood or the green of new plants; most of the flooring has been replaced, the walls have been repaired, and the ceiling doesn’t even leak anymore. It’s _almost_ back to the way she remembers it being when she was a little kid, and she tries not to cry as she and Kaidan kneel down by the gold plate in the floor to hand out the fish one by one.

(The tuna is the largest one, and it takes three Junimos to carry it off, over their heads. They’re adorable little things, even though they don’t necessarily like being called that.)

They take the crates with them up to the mountains and leave them next to the mining carts. It’s so much easier to take supplies home now that she doesn’t have to lug rocks and gems and, occasionally, monster parts all the way through town or through the muddy trail that winds between her farm and the house Tali and Garrus share.

They have to wait for the elevator to come up to get them, and Hazel takes Kaidan’s hand as they stand there.

“Ready?”

He squeezes her fingers.

“Ready.”


End file.
